The Difference Between Sinking and Drowning
by Cookie-Stories
Summary: "She'd slit her throat to die. That was it. No need for further explanation. She'd wanted to die." Clint has to deal with the repercussions of how to carry on living with Natasha, after a gruesome attempted suicide. (Trigger Warning)
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: Found this little thing while doing a spring cleaning of my Notes (something that was well overdue). I don't remember when I started this, maybe 2013 or 2014? Haven't touched it in years/months, but I figured it would be nice to fill in the remaining gaps and put it up here like intended. Hope you like it!**

* * *

 _ **"Cold bones, yeah that's my love.  
**_

 _ **She hides away, like a ghost.**_

 _ **Does she know that we bleed the same way?**_

 _ **Don't wanna cry, but I break that way."**_

 **- _Where's My Love, SYML_**

* * *

 **0 Months + 15 days: Denial**

It could be said that it was the first time Clint ever thought his partner could look so fragile. Her fiery hair faded to dullness, her ivory skin so translucent it looked paper thin, the life in her eyes, which were always the essence of her soul, dimming.

Just like a marionette held together and upright with strings, the vast amount of stitches over portions of her skin seemed to hold her together too, as if she would fall apart if anyone decided to rip out the strings of her sutured wounds.

There were a group of them down the vertical stretch of her forearm, trailing crookedly along the unintentional cut along one of her vital veins that she'd gotten from the latest mission, nearly killing her. That close shave with death had altered her somehow, as if the adrenaline rush before death was so addictive that she needed to try again. To die again. And so she had stitches across her neck too, holding her throat together from the wound where she'd driven a blade under her skin.

It had to be a lie, that she'd done it just for the rush. And so it was, everything just being a lie like he'd wanted it to be, only to come to a conclusion with her doctors once more that she had been keeping secret her half-decade old diagnosis of a very severe clinical depression. She'd slit her throat to die. That was it. No need for further explanation. She'd wanted to die.

He didn't exactly know where to start - to be mad at Natasha for having kept something that severe from him, as if it was one of the many invalid things that she decided to exclude from her life, or to be mad at himself because he should've known.

He worked with her, he befriended her, they fussed, cussed and laughed at terrible breakfast oatmeal together, fought on the same team, and had a beautifully tragic love affair with themselves, which was unearthed by a very gleeful Tony with a grin resembling those of the Cheshire Cat.

Until the day that he'd learned about her illness, he thought that he'd already known her inside out, and outside in. Whenever his mind roamed towards wondering how Natasha had kept it so well under wraps, forced grins and chuckles and affectionate pecks like it was nothing, it made him sick that he never once called her bluff.

So maybe she was an actress, one that could pull flawlessly stellar performances that would deceive anyone, but thus far he'd been able to see through every single one of them. Maybe she'd just gotten too good at it, or maybe she'd been this good all along.

Clint braced himself - like he'd been doing nonstop for the past two weeks - and took a step into her ward, then two. The door creaked, the bottom of his right sneaker squeaked. Both sounds hurt his ears, and for two seconds he had looked right at her in hopes of her chest expanding to turn. In hopes of her moving _at all_. Nothing happened, though, and his hopes vanished within that instant itself.

He inhaled, then exhaled, then shut his eyes standing two feet from the empty doorway. He wasn't going to deny himself of the right to believe that she was going to be better today. Maybe Natasha would look at him, maybe she'd talk, maybe - if just for a brief second - her lips would twitch in the likes of the slightest of smiles. Maybe she'd be happier today. Maybe she'd be better.

Restoring his faith, he walked further into the room until he was by the foot of her bed. It seemed she was asleep, eyes closed, expression serene. Her chest rose and fell evenly under her duvet and sweater.

Straying from the sight of her face a few inches south, with no shadow to make it miraculously vanish, was the cleanly split line that went right across her neck, an obvious scar from her left ear to her right. It was amongst another four silver scars, all worn out and faded with time. They reminded Clint of the precautions he should have taken, of all the premonitions he should have had.

He'd known to have to protect her, having known all these, but it was the case of not having protected her well enough. His mistake. Anything, any excuse, just so he wouldn't let himself hate her more than he detested himself.

Managing a few more steps towards the chair by her bed, he sank into the cold comfort of the seat, desolate, desperate and defeated. He sighed, hunching over to rest his elbows on his knees. He pressed his palms together, as if in prayer, and rested his forehead. None of the tension left his body, even at rest. And he sat there, unwavering as if frozen in time, for what seemed like hours.

"This isn't you, Tasha. I know... I know this isn't you." Clint finally pleaded.

Or maybe it always had been. Deep down, he had the same reckoning as he had many years ago, that maybe self-destruction was all she ever knew. And now, circumstances were forcing them to admit it.

* * *

 **TBC**


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: I'm ba-a-a-ack. Sorry this took so long, but hopefully this being twice as long as the first installment will make up for it. Sorry if it isn't up to standards, or if it's just plain bad. I encourage you guys to leave comments (but you're not obliged to), let me know what you might want to see in the next 3 stages, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance. Hope you like this one!**

* * *

 _ **"All I did was fail today,**_

 _ **All I wanna be is whites in waves.**_

 _ **All I did was fail today,**_

 _ **All we do, all we do..."**_

 **- _All We Do_ , Oh Wonder**

* * *

 **1 Month + 2 Days: Anger**

"The doctors are suggesting a new course of medicine for Miss Rom-"

" _God_. There's pretty much nothing anyone can do now if she wants to rot in that fucking ditch she's in!"

"So you... don't want to follow through with this course of action?"

"Please, do." Stark intervened. "Don't listen to Barton. The man's had a little too much to drink, you could actually taste his liquor breath from a mile away."

"No, please do." Clint mimicked. "Please, because we have all the money in the world standing right here, don't we? Yeah Stark, so let's just waste it on bullshit like-"

He halted at the taste of vomit in his mouth, leaving him nauseated. His legs couldn't seem to find solid ground, and gravity left him. The vertigo knocked him over, and he struggled to support himself with a weak grip on the nurses' counter.

"You okay, Legolas?" And Clint responded with a slight nod, trying to find back his centre.

"That bad?"

Tony shrugged, soothing the fingers of one hand over the archer's shoulder. "He's been like a wrecking ball of unresolved issues lately these days. Grieving, pissed and guilty all at once, it's basically sucking the life out of him."

"It really is, huh." The leading doctor, Michaelson, mused as he observed Clint roam the hall for a moment, before turning back to Stark. "You're here for Agent Romanoff's charts again, I assume. I'll just be a minute. If you'd like to discuss it, you could follow me. The room's just right behind here."

By then, Clint had already ventured back into the room he knew all too well.

"Are you gonna be okay by yourself in there? _Sure Tony, go with the doctor. I'll be fine. Promise I won't break anything, or anyone, this time_." The older avenger muttered and retreated to the back office with Michaelson.

He entered the office and immediately felt a grim presence weighing down on him. Michaelson had already sat himself down with the file laid out on the table in front of him, and Stark followed suit.

The first set of papers that the avenger was met with was a form for transfer.

"We think that it would be better off if we moved her up."

"But she's doing fine right here. How does moving her from this level to the one 3 levels above change anything?"

"They have better facilities, equipment, and nurses that specialize in the area. The people there know what to look for. They know how to react."

Tony pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to massage away the tense frown on his forehead. "You're talking about moving her to a psych ward."

"I'm guessing, it's not going to sit well with Agent Barton?"

The mechanic sighed, shaking his head. "Nope."

"I'm really sorry about that, but Trauma needs its wards. As you can probably see, we've been on a streak of bad missions. And physically, Natasha is doing exceptionally well. Her stitches are nearly fully healed, her vitals aren't deteriorating. I'm afraid Trauma can't keep her."

"And it'll help her? More than it will with you?" He asked, and Michaelson nodded, eyes peering down at the table and his hands. That was it. The good doctor had given up. In his specialty, she was a lost cause. "I understand. When will you be moving her up?"

"Thursday. Is that alright? I could push it a day or two, if you or Agent Barton need a little more time."

"No, it's fine. I'll break the news to him before then."

"Poor guy." The doctor sighed.

The avenger shook his head. "She's all that he's got."

"And she pulls this on him."

"She's been a top notch bitch as far as I've known her, since '10. But they always kept each other afloat. I don't know what kind or relationship they had, but she made sure of that. She was always there to help him find the surface."

"Like his panic attack in the trauma ward last year."

"You know about that?"

"I was the leading physician on his case back then."

"Oh."

"I wish there was something I could do or say, to make the situation better." The doctor commented, sounding a little dejected.

Tony pondered, his lips pursed tightly together in thought. "I don't think there's anything in the world we can do that will ever be enough to save someone that's drowning in his own head."

* * *

Back in her ward, Clint shut the door. She was awake, but it was easy to see that she wasn't present. The archer stared at her from the door, regardless.

He scanned her from head to toe. She was lying on her back today, eyes staring blankly at the ceiling as the rest of her body assumed to neglecting her surroundings. It was far easier when she was in her coma.

"I don't understand you." He said. She didn't look over. "I just don't. I can't fathom how you could be so stupid, how you could be so selfish. I don't think I ever will."

No response. It just fueled his anger. He felt the surge of heat to the tips of his fingers, to the tips of his toes, up to his neck and turning his ears a hot red.

His fingertips prickled with adrenaline, leaving his fists clenching and unclenching, over and over again.

"I fucking know you're there, I know you're listening. If you want to act like this, at least have the guts to admit it!" Still nothing. He began to inch forward, with what little coherence and stable balance he had. "You don't get to just leave someone hanging and simply disappear, Natasha! I deserve _some_ answers, at the very least!"

Natasha continued to stare blankly at nothing in particular. He was by her bedside now, looking down at her healing stitches. "I hate you, you know," his voice shook with anger. "I used to assume I was angry because I cared about you, but really, it's because I despise you. I despise your selfishness. I despise knowing you. I despise you."

The archer dragged the chair from the wall to her bedside impulsively, and sat down. One leg bounced restlessly against the floor, and another hand wiped his sticky face.

Anger, and most probably the repercussions of a little too much alcohol for one night were making Clint feel bad. He had chills shooting up and down his nerves, and he had hot flushes rushing through his veins. He had a heavy head that didn't help his balance at all, and he felt it pounding as the vessels in his forehead constricted every time he clenched his jaw.

Lesson learned: Don't drink when pissed. Contrary to popular belief, or so it may seem, alcohol does _not_ resolve any emotional issues.

"I should've let you bleed out when you decided it was fine to just kill yourself." He started, anger in the undertones of his tense voice. "I shouldn't have panicked, shouldn't have tried to stop the bleeding, shouldn't have begged you to stay alive. To look at me, to breathe. I shouldn't have had to be that desperate, that _pathetic_ , for you."

"No, you know what? Actually, what I should've done was kill you when I had the chance, when it was my job. Then you wouldn't have had the chance to fuck me up like that. Because that's what you do to people, you fuck them up and leave them for dirt."

"Are you proud?" He sneered at her. Scoffed a little too, at the lack of response. He slouched forward, elbows still resting on the armrests, knee still bouncing nonstop like a drug addict craving for the next hit. Except he wasn't a drug addict.

Instead, he was addicted to his anger. He was exploding, he was belittling her, insulting her, being everything he shouldn't be to Natasha, at her. He was angry, and it felt exhilarating. Freeing, even. He couldn't stop, not now.

Heart pounding way too hard with way too much hot and angry energy, ears pulsing with blood, he felt his anger build. He felt the adrenaline in his veins, spreading to his fingers and his toes at lightning speed. The knee bouncing sped up, and he was breathing ragged with his chest growing tight with rage.

Finally, he knocked over his chair and stood up, towering over her. He felt his arms shove things off the bedside table, and his feet destroy the leg of the chair. "Are you proud of yourself? Are you? For god's sake, answer me!" He yelled.

The noise from the mess he made had now caught the attention of a number of staff. None of them were willing to stage an intervention, because the last time someone had done so, that poor lad of a nurse had his arm broken and his collarbone shattered.

"Are you happy, now that I want you to die?" And once he said it, he felt something within himself snap. The recoil punched him right in the gut as if with a cold, hard wrench, expelling the wind right out of his stomach and knocking him over.

Clint's back found a wall, and he plastered himself against it, trying to catch breaths but ending up with nothing. "I didn't mean it... I don't-" He managed, with a thin voice. He looked up at her bed from the floor, as if in hopes that she would be perched on the edge of her bed, looking right back down at him to say that she forgave him for his tactlessness.

She wasn't.

"Shit!" His head pounded badly, and with a fist he tried to knock the pounding away. And then again, and then once more. And then he just couldn't stop, accompanying it with the many _shit_ 's and _I'm sorry_ 's that he muttered to himself.

The lack of air and the quiet muttering eventually turned into quiet sobs, and then into less-quiet sobs. His chest was tightening up. His lungs, and all the way down the length of his arms and up to his ears, everything was on fire.

It was just about time when a cold hand gripped his shoulder hard, sending a chill down the length of his spine. "You okay, Clint?"

Clint looked up at the older man, eyes wet, spit drip-dropping from his lips. "I still love her. I don't want her to die. I don't. I don't."

Tony softened at the whimpering voice of the otherwise strong and courageous archer. He squeezed the archer's shoulder. "I know."

The older avenger scanned his younger counterpart from head to toe. He reeked of alcohol and an impending hangover from the gates of hell. His shirt was stained with his own spit and he looked like a thousand year old mess. Clearly, he needed a shower and sleep.

"Is this all we do?" Clint's voice cracked with ugly tears and ugly heaving, pulling back Tony's focus. "Do we only know how to hurt each other?"

Tony sighed. "I don't know." He then tried to help the archer to his feet. "C'mon, let's get you home."

In the background of his whisky clouded-mind, the archer could only make out the faint inkling of a sentence he'd heard. _I'll drop off a check for the damages tomorrow._

* * *

When asked the next morning by Steve about what had happened, Clint denied remembering anything, credits to the shitloads of alcohol. Tony knew otherwise.

Clint avoided any eye contact with him that morning.

The following night and without any goodbyes, the archer left on the first flight out to Tunisia, for a deep cover mission that wasn't meant to be taken on solo.

* * *

 **TBC**


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: My god, this took a year. Well, at least I tried. I assure you, more will come in time. Unless you experience time in a non-linear manner like heptapods, in which you might manage to foresee the end before the middle. Arrival, anybody? On a side note, hope you like this.**

 **Disclaimer: Disclaimed.**

* * *

 _ **"I can't see behind your eyes, but I'm sure that there's a storm,**_

 _ **Give me thunder give me rain, I can't take silence anymore.**_

 _ **Hit me with some lightning so I can feel something other than numb,**_

 _ **I can't see behind your eyes when they're staring at the floor."**_

 **- _Just Say, Extreme Music_**

* * *

 **5 Months + 13 Days: Bargaining**

Over the many years they'd worked together, and practically lived together, Natasha had presented him with her fair share of broken shards from broken mirrors. And all these years, he could've been alert enough to rouse some suspicions within himself, maybe try to piece the shards back together only to realize that each assemble would always miss a piece with a sharp jagged edge, but he never did think like that, not for a long time.

Or at least he hadn't, until he did. It was one of the few epiphanies he had on his deep cover mission, when his life hung in the balance. That, and also that Tony had left him a message saying that she was being moved to the Psych ward for being pretty mental. Nowadays, it wasn't hard for him to believe the extent of her actions anymore.

He had come to realize that both of them were better off not questioning her recklessness. Though, that didn't mean in any way that he had come to terms with it yet.

After all the surgery and a mandatory induced coma, and the binding bandages that were wrapped a little too tight around his entire upper body - all credits to his one entire shipwreck of a mission - he was paid a visit by the doctor with the British accent.

Michaelson wasn't his leading physician this time around. The archer was being handled, and in a particularly careful manner as if dealing with something fragile, by a senior and highly esteemed physician. This Dr. Fell was a favor called in by Fury; apparently there was an extra something special about "literally piecing a person back together" that warranted for Fell's presence.

But since Trauma was Michaelson's territory, the young doctor felt the need to drop by. "It's not getting any better. Worse actually," he admitted, and went on about the various instances of violence, or on several days, too much of a lack thereof, that had plagued her and baffled the shrinks on her case. "Maybe when you're feeling well enough, in a couple of days or weeks or something, you could go talk to her."

And so he did, an hour and two doses of highly concentrated morphine later. It took much dragging of his bare feet across the polished floor, fingers tautly clinging onto the mobile drip stand he was hooked up with, and a lot of cringing to get two levels up to the psych wards.

Michaelson was a little too invested in observing Natasha in detail, that he didn't notice the archer up and limping. And once he did, he was flustered.

"Are you bonkers? You're supposed to be in bed, resting. Your bones aren't ready for you to be up and about. You're barely recovered!" The doctor exclaimed.

"Told me to visit, so here I am doc," Clint shrugged stiffly. He joined the doctor at his spot by the nurse's counter. "So, what are we looking at?"

" _We_ are not looking at anything, and you're on doctor's orders to head back down or else I'll..." The rest of Michaelson's words seemed to tune out as soon as the archer caught sight of his partner.

The sight of the back of her head gave Clint a nasty feeling in his gut. Not a feeling of anger, but instead, the feeling of a void.

She looked different from before he left for Tunisia. The crimson dye in her hair was completely washed out now, leaving her with mid-length blonde hair. She had also lost most of her muscle mass, or any mass in general. Bones pressed against her skin in a taut manner that reminded him of his sick mother, and that itself sickened him.

First he couldn't recognize her for the insane way she was acting, and now he couldn't even recognize her by her appearance anymore. What else was there to lose?

Clint finally cut into the doctor's _very threatening_ speech mid-sentence. "She's not your patient anymore. Why are you still so invested in her?"

"W-What?"

"God knows, you've been coming up here everyday, standing at this very spot, just observing her from a distance."

Michaelson mouthed an "oh" to himself, and cocked his head to a side. His eyes were still locked on the assassin. "She intrigues me."

"You like to take things apart? Zero in on the details?"

"Not exactly. I just want to understand." He paused. "Why?"

"Hmm." And Clint said nothing more, which prompted the doctor to begin his rant on something that the archer paid no attention to.

He left the doctor's side mid-sentence and slowly made his own way to her room.

She must have heard the sound of his injury-laden footsteps, or the slight whine of his drip stand struggling to move under the bearing of most of his weight. She didn't even need to turn. "Heard you were pretty banged up."

"Yeah," he chuckled to himself, and then cringed at the jolt of pain around his ribs. "Apparently, I was given a very rude awakening about being nothing more than just human."

"Aren't we all?"

"No, not the ones I met. I did, however, overhear that they were called Inhumans."

"Huh. Were they hostiles?"

"SHIELD, actually," he said. "Guess I found what SHIELD's been keeping in its basement. Our very own Area 51, who would've guessed?"

She was silent for two moments. But two tense moments with her felt like an eternity. "It's good that you're fine now." _I'm glad you're safe,_ was something she would've said, but it seemed like she was making a deliberate effort to avoid any use of words that implied any involvement from her anymore.

It was an attempt at dissociating herself from the people and things that affected her. He knew that. But with the way her voice faltered, it was clear that the attempt was feeble.

Slowly but surely, silence began ringing at a shrill frequency that crept beneath their skins. Both master assassins, both broken one way or another, breathed the same air in the same room, with all but no words in mind to say to each other.

Natasha, on one hand, was speechless. She was present, but with nothing to say. Clint, on another, seemed distant. Maybe it was the morphine in his drip, or maybe it was something else, but when Natasha turned to look at him in the eye, she was familiar with the look that stared right back at her.

It was a look that he carried home with him on every bad occasion. After the whole Loki mind control fiasco. When he learned of Coulson's death. After a mission gone wrong. That day a whole twelve years ago when he spent the afternoon burying his ex-wife, and collapsed right into his new, redheaded partner's arms when he got back.

"You okay?" She asked, from across the room. He was still standing rigidly by the door, zoning out.

The archer shifted his gaze, from aimlessly staring at nothing, to staring at the ground that met his feet with a little bit more purpose. "Just thinking," he replied.

"About what?"

"The mission."

"You're back," she tried to swallow the thick lump etched in her throat. Her toothpick fingers raked through her hair. "Does it matter?"

He shut his eyes, taking one deep breath in, and another breath out, and three handicapped strides towards the bed. His jaw was clenched tight, and his nose twitched. "Maybe," he said softly. "I don't know anymore, Tash."

"Are you in pain? Do you need a doctor?"

"No... No. I just-" Another breath in, another breath out. And then he shook his head. "I'm sorry, I should go. I don't feel too good. I shouldn't have come up so soon."

"Is it because I sicken you?" Natasha asked quietly. He never realized how her voice sounded that hoarse, until now.

"God, no. It's me." He sat down on the bed, slow and steady so his chest didn't hurt. "I haven't been feeling as good as I should be after the mission. Sleepless nights, aches, zoning out. I was trying really hard to feel okay, for you. You do tend to worry a lot, and I didn't want you to worry. But I just... I can't lie to you. It would feel wrong."

"You don't have to do anything for me, Clint. You knew that, since Day 1."

"I do everything for you," he said, glancing up at her and feeling surprised that she was looking right at him, observing him.

And then his face started to change. A mildly troubled face twisted into a frown. He twisted his body to face her completely, ignoring the crunch of pain spreading through his ribs, and reached a hand out to brush his fingers against her left cheekbone. Her _swollen_ left cheekbone.

She recoiled away.

"What happened?" Clint asked. His cold fingers continued to reach and linger on the large bruise that formed around her eye. There was a stitch near her brow too. This time, she eased into his touch.

She shrugged.

"I don't... I don't understand."

"I woke up, strapped to this bed two days ago. And that British doctor, he told me that I locked all the doors and ran myself into the bathroom wall, and that I nearly fractured the side of my face." Natasha said slowly, observing his eyes. He was observing hers too, and somewhere along the way, his eyes had hit some kind of realization which he didn't care to pass any comments on. "But I don't remember any of that. It's as if I lost time."

"Did you tell the doctors that?"

"Yeah." She paused. "Clint?"

"Hmm?"

"You know what this means."

"It's not happening." The response was immediate, assertive, hard with a hint of frustration. His muscles grew taut as he stiffened. It took her by surprise, and her breath caught.

For a moment, they had both gone back fourteen years, when she had just defected. Back then, he would mention otherwise, but barely any trust existed between the two. His tone would be warm, but calculative, and when he claimed he was unarmed, he would always hide two daggers by either ankle in case he ever needed it when they went down the street for breakfast bagels and coffee.

She stiffened in defence of that thought. She had nearly forgotten, after fourteen good years, the kind of people they had been at the start. Untrusting, manipulative, functional but toxic. He'd said he wouldn't hurt her, not one bit, but she didn't doubt that back then, he would've killed her in a heartbeat as soon as she made a move against SHIELD. He was trained, he was good, he had a charming personality, and he was an exceptional liar. Surely not as good as she was, that he was able to slip anything past her, but he was nearly good.

Then she remembered the kind of people that the both of them were now, and it scared her even more.

Clint had caught on to the negative energy he had let on, that his partner had picked up on. He let the tension go with a deep sigh through his nose, and slipped his calloused hand weakly into hers.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean it that way. I'm just a little tired," he apologized. "I won't let it happen to you. And even if it does, we'll deal with it. I'll deal with it. There are better doctors, better scientists, now. We'll find a way to fix it. I'll make sure nothing happens to you while we do. I promise."

She didn't respond. He squeezed the hand he held, drawing circles on the underside of her palm. "We just have 5 months left. We'll get through it, and then we'll leave. We'll leave the country, make a normal life for ourselves somewhere else. Actually get ourselves registered this time, like we've been meaning to for the past year and a half. Maybe even move to Russia and visit your mum. I know you haven't talked to her in a while. Maybe we'll stay with her for a bit, let the both of you make up for lost time-"

"How can you promise me things like that?" She spat quietly.

"Because I trust you. I trust us." He said. "This place is making you sick and I don't want you feeling stuck here any longer."

" _I'm_ making me sick. It's not this place, it's me."

"I know, Tasha... I know."

"No, you don't." It was a quiet kind of anger, but he sensed that it had been boiling within her for some time now. She wasn't angry at him, she was angry _with_ him. "You don't understand. You can't understand. I don't want you to ever understand how this feels like. The despair, the loneliness, the hopelessness, the guilt. I'm stuck in a body I can't seem to run away from, and it fucking sucks, okay? I don't want you to understand."

Clint sighed. "I just don't want you to feel like you're alone in this."

"I don't care. I don't want you involved. I don't want you near this."

"Natasha..."

"It's a downward spiral, Clint. It'll empty you out like it has emptied _me_ out, and I don't want to be the one that puts you in that situation."

He nodded. "Okay."

"Okay? You promise?"

"Okay, I promise."

She bit her lip and nodded too. He watched her eyes, and the furious concern that raged behind them. She was stubborn, especially so with people she cared about.

The archer smiled sadly, unhooked himself from his IV, and carried his legs over the edge and onto the ward bed. He let go of her hand and beckoned her over, and in her shifting, only then did he get to see the padded restraints on one of her wrists. It tied her down to one of the railings located by the side of her bed.

His heart sank, and even more so when she didn't seem bothered about it, or that he now knew about it.

She turned over to rest her chin gently against his chest, breathing in the smell of sterile bandages. He hooked an arm beneath and around her, pulling her close and folding her frail, cold body into his warmth. She could feel the heat of his body through his shirt, and he could feel the grooves of her ribs through hers.

"I'm scared," Natasha admitted.

And it was true. Ever since the debacle in the bathroom, she had been afraid to sleep. At the back of her mind was always this incessant fear that bad things would happen if she fell asleep. She would lose time, hurt herself, hurt someone else. That _she_ would be the bad thing that happened.

She had known her depression for a long time, but this felt different. It felt urgent. It felt drastic. The darkness used to come in waves, and every now and then she would be able to come up for air, but now it was a goddamn ocean with no end in sight, and the feeling of losing herself into the darkness completely, it scared her shitless.

"I know." He mumbled into her forehead.

The archer ran the calloused fingertips of his free hand down the length of her arm, stopping when he came into contact with the cold burn of metal. He peered over, only to realize that he was touching the band of restraint wrapped around her wrist.

Instinctively, he moved his hand away. She shifted too, this time away from where her head was tucked snugly into the nook of his neck. She turned her body in the opposite direction of his and closer to where her restraints met the bedside frame, freeing his other arm.

Clint squeezed her shoulder. "What's wrong?"

"You can leave, if you want to."

He sighed and placed his forehead, then his lips, on the back side of her shoulder. "I don't want to. I'm sorry about that, it was instinct. I wasn't sure-"

"I'm sorry," she murmured, voice loaded with pure disdain and defeat. It was as if she didn't even have the energy to be mad anymore. "I'm sorry I fuck people up. I'm sorry I fucked you up. I've been trouble for you since the day you brought me home. I'm sorry I always hurt you. I'm sorry it's so hard to be around me now. I will never be proud of that."

"Natasha..." He frowned into the nape of her neck. With one free thumb, he rubbed circles into her shoulder.

Another two seconds of endless silence. "You were right. I can't hurt anyone anymore if I'm dead. Especially after what's happening." She said it quietly.

"Please don't talk like that." The archer pleaded, more demand than request.

The room fell into a deep silence right after. Once it was certain that he wasn't going to get a reply anymore, he backed off and away. He kept the three inch distance between them, and listened intently to the sound of silence to pass the time.

Reverting back into her old ways of pushing him away, that didn't mean that he was going to revert back to his of walking away when she did so.

"I love you, Tash. I care about you. I come home to you, every time. You mean a whole lot to me, so remember that. The voices in your head, they can't take that away from you. Not then, not now." He said.

After moments, her breaths steadied into a deep, slow motion, and it stayed that way as she slept. He stuck around, hearing every discomfort that escaped her lips, and feeling every discomfort of his own that kept him up.

He left two hours later.

* * *

 **5 Months + 18 Days: Bargaining**

In between the 12th time that he shifted in his seat, trying to rid himself of the insistent ache in his bones and dead fingers, a panic began to creep up on him from the pit of his gut.

An unfamiliar sense of unease sent his body and mind into alarm. It clenched onto his lungs and his heart, to a point whereby his chest paralyzed itself more than the bandages ever did, and that breathing became a chore.

He fought the urge to bow over his legs to rest his elbows on his knees, or to press his forehead into his palms and sigh. Instead, he opted to tilt his head and rake a hand of fingers through his overgrown hair - an unkept shrub that was long overdue for a trim - with an annoyed grunt.

The holographic ping of a throat-clearing sound caught back the archer's attention, not that the growing throb in his bones cared enough to cease.

"Agent Barton. Is something bothering you?" The woman who cleared her throat, questioned.

To Clint's knowledge, her name was Hawley. The only other man on the screen now was Gideon Malick. Ever since the fall of SHIELD and the brutal murder of majority of the councilmen, the Council hadn't yet bothered to recruit new council members.

"No, ma'am." The archer responded.

Hawley plainly nodded her head, and Malick spoke up this time. "So, Clint. You do know that Agent Romanoff used to be, and still is, an international fugitive, don't you?"

"I do."

"And you do know that it was the Council that gave her a second chance?"

 _Bullshit_ , he thought. It was his own decision to bring her in, when the Council's orders for SHIELD were to shoot on sight, and shoot to kill. "Yes, sir. She was a valuable asset for the Council and to SHIELD."

"So you understand that she was bound by contract," Malick said affirmatively. "Because of that contract, The Council is accountable for the actions of assets like her. Even when assets like her become a liability."

"We both do have the same contract. Well, maybe not entirely the same. But I did however take a read before she signed it, so I believe I know what the contract says, right down to the detail." It came off a little too curtly, and this peeved the councilman.

This time, it was Malick who cleared his throat. "Then it mustn't come as a surprise that the Council is displeased to learn about her past few... _unfortunate incidents_."

"No, it doesn't." Clint responded in a deadpan manner. "But nowhere in the contract does it state that the Council will be liable. If anything, you guys wrote the contract to write us off if anything happened. You wrote it to throw us under the bus. SHIELD in bed with fugitives doesn't look that good in the news, does it?"

Hawley was clearly uncomfortable with that accusation. Malick, however, remained unaffected.

"She's a liability."

"She's sick."

"You know what happens with deadweight."

"She's my problem, not yours."

The councilman shot a cold glare at the the younger agent, and Clint returned the favor. Hawley shifted uncomfortably, caught between the exchange of cold glares between both men.

Malick leaned over forward in his seat. Stuck within his two dimensional screen, the gesture didn't exactly strike the intensity it was intended to have. "I have the power to put her down right now, right in the palm of my hand, and all you can argue is that she's sick?"

Clint nodded.

Hawley turned to face her fellow councilman. "Gideon, don't." She shook her head sternly. He ignored it.

The archer scoffed with disbelief. "Permission to be blunt, Councilman Malick?"

Without offering the courtesy of a proper reply to the councilman, the younger man went on anyway. "With all due respect, sir, but this whole meeting is total bullshit. It's pretty ironic, don't you think?"

"I don't see how anything is ironic." The councilwoman responded quietly.

A guttural sound, something in between a chuckle and a scoff, escaped the agent's throat. "You talk about power, but you don't have power."

"And what's the point here, Agent Barton?" Malick rushed. Of course, the councilmen already knew all of this.

"The point is that it's ironic. Nearly all of your high value assets were defective at some point. That didn't mean that we didn't get the job done. We put the Council's name on the map, a household name that everyone trusts now. But you're afraid of - like what - someone who can't even bear to get out of bed once in 2 weeks?"

The Councilman tapped his finger against the surface of his table. The more Clint followed the action with his eyes, taking in the digitally amplified sound of fingernail and fingertip against a hardwood desk, the more he could hear his own heart tick.

Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. And each tick felt like his heart was crumpling within, into, and upon itself. Now more conscious of the pain, due to the sudden silence engulfing in the room, it seemed to intensify.

He could feel in creeping from within his chest, coiling around his ribs and crawling right down his left shoulder and into his left elbow.

And then the tapping stopped, but his chest ticked and hurt anyway. "That still doesn't justify her killing 5 hospital staff," said Malick.

"I have to agree, Agent Barton," Hawley added. "I know she was a great help to the Council while she was in great health last year. Even if she _is_ sick, with whatever that we don't yet know about... Even if she's what you call _defective_ , she still committed murder, and within SHIELD too. The Council can't and won't tolerate that, and we're trying very hard to feel the opposite."

Clint damn near hit the ceiling, but nonetheless, he remained composed. "Then it's really kind of funny, _amusing_ actually!" Cue sarcastic laughter, smile and a bitter scoff.

"Councilwoman Hawley, everyone in this room knows damn well what you did. I admit, what happened to you and your sister was tragic. Your sister killed herself 3 weeks after the incident, and I'm really sorry about that. But you sitting there, telling me right in the face that you don't condone murder?" The archer prompted, not exactly waiting for an answer. "The night you turned eighteen, you hunted down the man that hurt the both of you, and you blew his head off with your father's shotgun."

Hawley's face turned grim at the mention of that incident. But the anger fueling him from his gut kept the agent on a roll. There was no stopping now.

"Pew," Clint motioned with his finger gun, "right off. One of the neighbors probably had a video of it. But that wasn't enough, was it? So you killed his wife, you killed his three pitiful kids, and you set his house on fire with his own mother tied to a beam in the basement. I bet you didn't even regret it." His anger simmered, and it brought an edge to his words.

Now, as Hawley was getting all worked up about how the archer had uncovered such a deep and dark secret of hers, he turned to Malick. His turn. "Oh Gideon." He sighed.

"Don't you dare."

"I honestly don't even know where to start. Your track record is... it's _astounding_! Why not we tell our good friend Hawley, here, about all the great, revolutionary things you've been doing for a hobby? You know, being the new, currently one and only, head of-"

"That's enough." The councilman warned.

Clint straight out guffawed. It hurt his ribs and chest and his left arm was beginning to throb, but who cared? If he was going to collapse in that very room during that very argument, he was going to go out with a bang.

"Oh, now you're just being defensive. You know, the last time anyone of your stature kept secrets, it didn't really end well-" He was waving his right arm now with expression. His left arm stayed lax and as his anchor point to the table before him.

"I said that's enough!" Malick stood up, palms slammed flat down on the table.

The councilman was towering over his table in his two dimensional screen, and the agent leaned back into his chair, smirking.

"I think we're done for the day, aren't we, boys?" Hawley led.

"If _he_ isn't saying anything, then I guess we are, Councilwoman Hawley," said Clint, and he got up from his seat. He did it slowly, mostly because he was in too much pain to move quickly, but he did so in a calculated manner.

Malick huffed. "You're becoming much more of a liability than you are an asset, Clint Barton. Especially after the incident with Loki all those years ago. It's going to get you killed one day."

"You pay me to know these things. No-one else, but me. I turn over stones, cars, houses, to find things about people that would benefit the likes of someone else, and make sure they never surface. If things ever go south, I'm not just any other liability you can toss to a corner. I'm _your_ liability too. It's not a one-man show."

"Well, secrets are costly," commented Harley.

"They are." The agent responded, eyes still fixated on the older councilman whom had just voiced two threats in one sitting. Coupled with a piercing stare, the gesture itself was chilling.

He could see Malick's jaw tighten, as if biting back words. When it became evident that no-one else was pushing for a close, and it was just a silent staring match between the three, Clint was ready to take his leave, which was long overdue.

About to walk, he paused. "It's human instinct to fight back when you're forced into an uncompromising corner. I really don't mean to use it against you, but you gave me the gun, and then you gave me the bullets. Don't blame me for using it when I have to."

"Maybe we should put you right back where you came from. It's right where you belong, along with that partner of yours. I'm sure she's not a stranger to such prisons, is she?"

"Yeah, maybe you should." He shrugged nonchalantly. "Also, just wanted to say that this would have gone way better had we just talked about Tunisia."

And with that, the archer was gone.

* * *

 **5 Months + 20 Days: Bargaining**

It was the first time in nearly a year that the dear archer asked her on a date. By date, really, he just meant getting her sickly body out of the sickly ward and getting that sickly body some food that wasn't bland and disgusting.

Natasha had told him that she was too tired to walk, and he agreed.

"Exactly, that's why my mission today is to get some food into that tiny body."

She chuckled briefly. "And what kind of food do you plan to get in me, exactly?"

"Well, that would just ruin the surprise, wouldn't it?" Clint quipped, leaning his weight against a nearby wheelchair and wheeling it over for his partner. "Hop on."

"Could you at least tell me where we're going? I'd rather just stay here if it's too far, or too open." She frowned, hesitating.

The archer pondered for two seconds, then said, "It's in the building. It's in the cafeteria of the building. But I assure you it's not gross cafeteria food." She still hesitated. "I need you to trust me on this, Tash."

He had held out his hand now, asking for her hand, as well as asking, figuratively, for her trust. Instead, she stood up, reached out and took the wheelchair by the handle, and turned the chair around to face him.

"My body isn't broken, yours is. Get in."

"I thought you said you were tired."

"I'm always tired. I've been tired for years, doesn't mean I don't get up and out to do my job." She explained. She had a full frontal view of the dark crescents forming heavily under his eyes, and the way his eyes were slightly bloodshot under a certain lighting. "But you look like complete shit. Now, in."

After a long protesting silence despite the searing pain down his left arm, Clint relented. "But I'm wheeling myself," he warned. "Don't you even dare touch the handle."

He led her down to the back kitchen of the cafeteria where everything had been set up. There were ingredients on one counter, condiments on the next, and utensils lined up beside the hot appliances. Nothing was made, but everything was prepared.

She picked up a slicing knife by the black handle and observed it with appreciation. She tested the tip with her finger. "Did you really think this through?"

"Think what through?"

"Bringing me here, to a kitchen full of knives. After, you know, I..." She made an action of slicing her jugular, right over where her scar was.

The archer gave her a dark, warning look. "Don't do that."

"Okay, sorry. I was joking."

"You don't get the joke about this," he said, as she was putting the slicing knife back where she found it. "Not after the past 5 months."

"I'm sorry, okay? See, not touching." She apologized again, and explicitly raised her hands in surrender away from the equipment. Instead of touching, Natasha eyed the counters with skepticism. "You haven't cooked in ages."

"Indeed, I haven't."

Clint had gotten out of the wheelchair now and had limped his way over to the center of all 3 countertops. He favored his left as he propped himself against the counter with his hip.

Moving from the counters, now she eyed him slowly, giving him a one-over.

"And you only cook when you're angry." She described. "Are you angry? With me?"

He turned on the stove and sat an oiled pan over the flame. "I don't cook only when I'm angry."

"You do."

"I don't." He protested.

"The first time you did, you told me you hated doing it because it reminded you of your mum, but you did it anyway because it was better than putting your anger in somewhere more destructive."

It was silent for a moment, then followed with a heavy sigh. "You're having a good day. I haven't seen you have a good day in months. I'm not going to let one of my bad days ruin one of your good ones."

When he thought about it, he realized that he was right. Even before he had heard from the doctor's about her diagnosis, she didn't have many good days. The rest weren't particularly bad days, maybe just moderate and neutral ones. But still, her good days were few and far between.

The last time that she did, he recalled, the archer had just dug out a ring from his pocket and asked for her hand in marriage, in the privacy of their hotel room.

She couldn't even bear to get out of bed the next morning and slept through two days straight. It concerned him much less than it should have, he realized now, but he had attributed it to her feeling exhausted from back to back missions. Clearly, he should've known better.

That was eighteen months ago. She hadn't had a specifically good or jolly day since then. Maybe a smile here or a chuckle there, a little sex in between, but she had been either working like a dog or sleeping like a log ever since the proposal.

Natasha maneuvered around the counters, and went from standing at an opposite end from him, to right by his shoulder.

"I can't have a good day if I know you're having a shit one, and I don't know the reason why," said the redhead. "What's wrong?"

"It's just stress. Work stress. Nothing big."

"Clinton Francis Barton doesn't get stressed over _nothing big_."

He had dropped garlic into the pan now, and she could feel some oil splatter against her forearm where she propped herself beside him. It sizzled loudly for five long seconds, as if it was an attempt by the archer to halt their discussion.

She watched him anyway, trailing the movement of his arms, catching his eyes whenever she managed to. Every time she did, her eyebrows would shoot up in a "so?" manner, and she would await a proper reply.

He would ignore it, but only up until her fifth try.

"Fine," Clint breathed. "So I screwed up my mission pretty bad. A bunch of people are taking passes at me, I have to fix what I colossally messed up, Fury's watching me like a hawk - which is supposed to be my job, mind you - and Malick and Hawley are giving me a ton of shit over it."

"That's nothing big. You've been through all that shit before."

"That's exactly what I've been telling you."

He drained the boiled strings of pasta from a pot full of water, and eased them into the sizzling pan. The sound of the sizzling dampened under the strands of pasta. He stirred the pan around for a bit, then left the rubber spatula in the pan as he moved down the counter to tend to other ingredients.

Natasha followed him down the row, and observed him intently.

"There's more. I'm sure of it." She insisted. Her eyes were still on him.

In between putting together his granddad's specialty tangy cream sauce, he returned her inquisitive look with a grim one of his own. "Well, Phil's alive."

"Oh." She frowned. "Shit."

"Yeah, I had the same reaction."

"After all these years." Her tone was clipped.

"Apparently he's the one running SHIELD's Area 51 on an airbus."

"How'd you find him? Caught the Bus on your jet's radar?"

The archer went back to folding the sauce over and over, and stretching out an arm every now and then to stir the pasta. Natasha took initiative to stir it for him instead. "I was dying."

"What?"

"When I first saw him, I was dying. My insides were in shreds. I literally thought he was about to take me because he was hovering right above me. Bobbi too."

"Bobbi was there? Like an NDE?"

"As in, Bobbi's alive. They both are. I don't know how, I don't know why, but they both stood outside my ward the whole of yesterday contemplating coming in. They were talking to the nurses too, so it couldn't have been all in my head, could it?"

"Huh," she said. It came as a complete shock to the redhead, probably as much as it did to the archer.

After all, she had lived through seeing him hurt after Bobbi's death, and grieve for weeks after learning about Coulson's. Both their deaths were as real to her as it was to him. And now, alive? After years?

"You know, maybe it really was me just imagining things, like I used to."

"You never know. Might be real." Natasha said. "Did you talk to either of them?"

He chuckled sharply, a hint of cynicism hidden deep beneath it. "Like two words. I basically told them to get out."

"Were they hurt when you did it?"

"Was I supposed to care if they were?"

"They care about you."

"Like hell they do."

The redhead nodded in understanding, then turned to face her partner. "What about me? Are you mad with me too?"

"Very." He threw the sauce into the pan. A smell of garlic and Tabasco sauce wafted into the air. "You put me through hell, Tash. For months."

"Why didn't you just leave me? I didn't ask for you to stick around. I wanted you to go, move on from _this_."

"I couldn't."

"But why?"

"Maybe it's something too complex for you to understand, after everything, but it was because I loved you."

 _I loved you_ , it had a slight ring to it. A warm devotion that didn't quite warm her cold heart yet, but after years, it was thawing. After all, this was the man she had said she'd marry.

Clint didn't spare a glance at her. He went ahead to slice the prepped chicken breasts, flinching subtly at the sight of the meat splitting itself open. He could almost remember the blood soaking on his arms and up his sweater sleeves as he grappled with her torn throat. He could smell the same kind of copper in the air.

"You don't have to do anything for me." She reinforced, just like their previous conversation in her ward.

Her fingers lingered on his arm, and he stilled. This time, he turned his entire body to look right at her. He scanned her from head to toe, internalizing and recognizing the woman that stood before him, until he finally found her eyes.

Today, her eyes felt like home. A home he'd been searching for, all these months that he felt at a loss. There was a warmth that he had helped fuel, that he craved.

"I do everything for you," he said, looking right into her eyes. Then, his eyes dropped to her fingers as he grabbed them in his. "I'm always mad with you, but never for long. If anything, I'm more pissed with myself than with you."

"Why?"

"Since day one, since I'd met you, I swore I would protect you from all the bad things in this world. You were eighteen, you suffered horrors no one could ever imagine. When I found you, I had to talk the gun you had to your head out of your hand, for an hour. I thought... I really thought I was doing well. I was supposed to stop this, to prevent this."

"I didn't-"

"So tell me," said Clint. "Tell me how I'm supposed to just keep moving, to leave, to move on from the very thing I'd spent over ten years of my life preventing, and knowing that I've failed. Am I supposed to accept this failure, if it comes at a cost? How do I keep going, alone?"

"Well, you just do, Clint." She said, with a sigh. "If it's anyone that's going to be able to do these things alone, it's you. You have courage, you have compassion, you would've thrived outside of this place. You still would."

The archer didn't respond. There was a quiet kind of disappointment that resonated in him, riddled with a hint of fear behind his eyes. That was the kind of man he was, afraid of being happy, alone.

Natasha hadn't left SHIELD because she couldn't. A move like that required blanket immunity across countries she had sold out. She had immunity now, under her contract, as long as she stayed in it to finish her twelve year tenure.

Him, on the other hand, stayed for her. He had long fulfilled his contract, and even if he didn't, he could've left anytime he'd wanted. He stayed anyway, and it became a crutch for him.

The people here became his only family. The life here became the only one he knew. He was convinced that he was better off with the people here, that he was a better person in here, than he was outside and alone. He kept this mindset no matter how much this place starved him of fresh air.

Clint returned to quietly putting the last bits of his grandfather's signature pasta dish together, frowning in stress and biting the inside of his lip. She caressed the side of his face with her fingers. "But until then, you're stuck with me." She said.

"What?" He was genuinely taken aback. His brows shot up as his right hand kneaded away the tension in his left shoulder.

She nodded. "I'm trying again, Clint. To get better. We've always done it together."

He breathed. It was shaky. There was a flicker of an uncertain smile that washed over his features for the briefest of moments.

"Really?" The archer asked, as he turned off the stove with his right hand and took the pan by the handle with his left.

When he did, the pan barely left the stove top before it rested back down on the counter. Clint flinched and made a face. The redhead watched as he did, and took the handle of the pan in her own hand and lifted off the stove to the empty space beside the dinnerware.

"Yes, really."

"How?"

"Well," she said, reaching for two forks and passing one over to him, at the same time observing the way he took the fork in his right, non-dominant hand. "I'm getting discharged. Outpatient meds. Counseling four times a week. I was thinking of taking up training at the Academy for the remaining 5 months, something on the ground, you know."

Clint paused, staring at her for two long moments. She still couldn't exactly place the look on his face. Maybe it was just his mixed emotions. "Really?" He asked again, as if for confirmation.

"Really."

Without a second thought, he had enveloped her into his sculpted arms and she led with a tender peck to his lips. He pressed another into her forehead, by her hairline where he could smell the green tea scented shampoo she used to use. He hadn't smelt it since they last showered together.

She could feel the way his lips curved over her forehead, and how he nuzzled his nose into her hair to catch whiffs of the pleasant, familiar scent of her shampoo.

The whiffs helped to push away the smell of copper in his head, and replaced it with fresher, more emergent thoughts.

When she pulled back, he immediately took a forkful of spaghetti and docked it right in front of her lips. She shook her head subtly, but he didn't even need to use words to imply that he was going to make sure she ate at least half the plate.

Natasha finally relented, and took the first forkful into her mouth, which was surprisingly good. Then again, the archer was a good cook, and definitely much better than her kitchen expertise in instant ramen and box cereal. He was just... _good_. Always good.

"I know I never say it much, but you know I love you, right? More than anything in the world?" She asked. He watched her endearingly, and she watched right back.

He nodded with a quick smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. "I know. Love you too."

* * *

 **TBC**


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N: Just want to note that each chapter will average between 7,000 - 10,000 words from now onwards, as I'm trying to fit much more parts into each chapter to give it a little more context. Also, reviews on your likes and dislikes are much appreciated.** **Other than that, enjoy!**

* * *

 ** _"This pillowcase smells of you,_**

 ** _And time itself stops to prove._**

 ** _And for a moment, nothing's changed,_**

 ** _And everything just stays the same."_**

 ** _\- Sorry, Aquilo_**

* * *

 **5 Months + 23 Days: Bargaining**

"Clint."

He remembered that voice. It was a familiar one, so familiar that it brought a sour taste to his tongue. So familiar that he chose to ignore it. He carried on arranging his belongings on his hospital bed.

The area from his neck to his left bicep, to the side of his chest was still strained and sore with every movement, but he did it anyway. He hurried, this time around, to make it look like he was busy.

"Clint." It was less tentative than the first time. She also cleared her throat, which made it all the more awkward.

He continued with his falsely hurried manner in throwing his things together and rampaging to check for items among the pile, as if to make sure that he had everything.

The archer didn't even bother to turn around to address her. "Get out."

"I am out," she quipped. "You would know, if you were actually willing to turn around to look at me instead of messing up your things and then fixing them proper again for the fourth time in a row."

When he did turn around, he saw her standing right at the edge of his room, right behind the line separating his ward from the hospital hallways. It brought back memories of what made her so attractive in the first place. She was smart, he would admit that, and they had built the bulk of their relationship on both their wits.

He almost smiled at the thought. _Almost_.

"I just wanted to talk," she said.

He went back to throwing his things together again, turning his back to her. "Hope I've made it obvious enough that I don't."

"Well, we both know you're an easy person to persuade."

"I used to be," Clint muttered. "Not anymore. Guess it must come as a shock to you how much people change with time, doesn't it?"

"I'm sorry. You know I'm sorry."

"No. Actually, I don't. I don't think so. You were clearly _very_ apologetic when you left all those years ago, and left me behind along with it."

The archer could hear the way she shifted from foot to foot, a sign of nervousness and discomfort. "I had a job to do. The mission-"

"The mission comes first, right? After all these years, do you honestly still believe that?"

"It's what they taught us at Ops, to commit, all the way. Don't you remember that?" She reasoned. "We went through the same training, we took the same classes, we shared the same instructors. The mission always came first, before the man."

"I'm pretty sure that it wasn't self-directed. You save yourself, then the mission, and then the man," he said. "You know why I know that? Because I taught that exact same class for three years. Said the exact same thing. But you wouldn't know because you were busy being dead to me."

"I'm-"

"You know what, Bobbi? You don't get to say that to me anymore. That you're _sorry_ , that you _understand_. You're not, and you don't. It would make it a lot easier for the both of us if you just stopped trying. You should have just stayed dead. You shouldn't have come back. You're not making any amends here."

Clint was facing her now. After years, Bobbi Morse looked like a complete stranger in his eyes. She had matured, her hair was different, there was a scar over her left brow that wasn't there before. There was another wound in her shoulder, an exit wound right over the far end of her collarbone.

She nodded. "Okay. I just wanted to make sure you were patched up alright."

"I'm alright. All intact."

"You look a little tired-"

"I said I'm fine!"

"Good." Bobbi smiled sadly.

While the archer waited rather impatiently for his unwelcome guest to leave, he watched her give him a one-over. A good look from head to toe. When she did, there was a look in her eyes that he couldn't quite place. Maybe, as much as it had been for him, Bobbi also saw a stranger in the place of the man she used to love as well.

The thought of their relationship in shreds, the memory of how it had ended and how it had destroyed him back then, left an unnerving feeling in the pit of his stomach. A rhythm drummed in his veins and it made his fingers twitch and his knee bounce with nerves. He took a seat on the bed behind him.

Her eyes had stalled for a moment, staring at the finger where his engagement ring rested. It took her a brief moment too long to tear her eyes from the sight. "Well, I'm happy you're doing well now. She's great."

"You only met her once."

"She was a hot topic for years. I've heard."

"So were you," Clint reinforced. "You were all anyone ever talked about before Nat got picked up by May, after the crash."

He could remember how Melinda May, SHIELD's top Operations agent and mentor in the day, pulled her out of classes to train her one-on-one. She would always return to her dorm beaten and exhausted, and he would have kneaded the tension away for her.

The same thing had happened with Natasha as well. Being May's trainee, the extra training with him as her supervising officer. Putting them side by side only made him realize the close similarities.

"There's always going to be someone better. It was a matter of time." She commented, fingers lingering around the tan where her own wedding band had been. Clint chose not to pry.

They fell into an awkward silence after her last comment. In between his staring at the floor, and shifting her weight from one foot to another, Bobbi decided it was time to leave.

For some kind of reason, which Clint himself didn't understand, the sight of her turning on her heel and taking her leave angered him even more. His chest thumped heavily.

"Was it really a crash?" He questioned at the sight of her back. She stopped. "You know, I buried you. They told me there wasn't much left but I buried whatever they said they could recover. If you're standing here now, I don't know who the hell it was that I put in the ground."

Clint could see the way she had hesitated to turn back around to answer his question. He continued anyway. "And I sat at your grave everyday for a year. I was overwhelmed with this crippling guilt that I couldn't prevent your death. No matter how much I reasoned that I had made my point, and that it was your decision that led to it, I still went back everyday and I punished myself for it."

"I felt lost, and alone, with a crushing fear that maybe I really did kill everything I ever loved. Did you know that?" He said. His anger made his thirst thicken and his words tremble. His knee bounced a little more vigorously now, and he looked away from her, back to the floor. "So I just want to know, was it really a crash? Or was it a cover?"

His hands were clenched in fists, when Bobbi pulled a chair over to sit right in front of him, and tried to place a hand over his. The archer relaxed by a fraction, but then pulled his hands from beneath the warm touch of hers.

She kept her hand back as well.

"It was a crash, Clint. People died. The rest of us were injured bad. Fury and Gonzales pulled whoever was left from the wreckage, and put whoever they could salvage into rehab. Somewhere offshore. I was still tagged to the mission so I couldn't get treatment from anywhere with a huge SHIELD logo on its doorstep."

He breathed, hard. His anger still bubbled within him despite the explanation. "Did Phil know?"

"Not until he handled my relocation and infiltration," she said. "It was a couple of years after the crash. Before the infiltration, I was put on a number of smaller missions, until I was ready. I took the time to get everything together for the mission. My contacts, my assets, my cover."

"How bad was it? The crash."

"Bad enough, I guess. It severed my L3. I had to learn how to walk again." Clint reacted with a slight flinch. "Then, to fight. It still aches every now and again, but it doesn't bother me anymore."

"You could have called. Dropped a message. Left me a sign, telling me you were alive. You could have done any of that, Bob. Your death destroyed me."

"I know."

"And after all these years of accepting your death, of picking up the mess you left behind in your wake, and finally getting back some semblance of control in my life, you chose to come back and fuck things up again. You just didn't know how to stay dead, did you?"

She didn't quite know what to say. His words were cryptic and cut deeper than she had expected upon coming into this discussion. She clenched her fingers together and rested her elbows on her knees, hanging her head low just like the way he was doing so as well.

The archer took a long, deep breath in. He held it, and let it out through his nose. His anger went along with it. Finally, he lingered fingers by her wrist, but not daring to touch her. "Hey, I'm sorry. I didn't mean... It was just a lot of pent up shit from the past ten years. I didn't mean it."

"I'm sorry," she repeated quietly, despite Clint's earlier warning. "I didn't come back meaning to disrupt your life. When we take off again in a couple of days, it'll be like I never came back. I promise."

"You're leaving, again."

"I am. Wasn't planning on sticking around for long. Like I said, I just needed to know you were okay." She looked back up at him. The anger had left from his eyes, but his jaw was still taut.

"I'm okay."

Bobbi nodded, pursing her lips in a tight line. "Yeah, that's great."

"You know," the archer paused. "I have this insane urge to touch you right now, but I'm afraid that if I do, you'd disappear. In the months after you died, it always happened. I wouldn't be surprised if I'm actually having this conversation with myself."

"You're not. This is real."

"Or I might be straight up losing my mind. That works too."

"I'm here, Clint. This is real," she held out her hand. "Do you trust me?"

Clint stared incredulously at the offered hand. There was something daunting about reaching out to touch her, which he couldn't bring himself to do. Distinct in his memory, there had been several instances whereby he had had this exact argument with an alive Bobbi Morse, only to touch her and then watch the entire dreamscape disintegrate into nothingness until he woke up to his empty bed.

He did so anyway, and held his breath when he did. He tried two fingertips first, and then three, and then an entire palm. And she felt warm, warm and very much alive.

He waited for a moment, then two, and finally, in the three moments after he realized that she hadn't yet disappeared and that she was humanly warm, he wrapped his arms around her in an unexpected hug.

The sigh of relief that left him bellowed with echoes from a full ten years of grief. A tension that had wrapped around his chest since her death had released itself as relief enveloped over him and reverberated through every bone.

But as soon as he pulled away, a different kind of tension had taken its place. He tried hard to will it away.

"God, I missed you." She whispered under her breath.

Bobbi could feel his face now, and despite the fact that the man was weatherbeaten into a stranger she didn't quite recognize anymore, his features still felt familiar in her hands. She traced his strong cheekbones and the straight nose, his deep-set eyes and the faint pout in his lower lip. His hair retained the same kind of softness.

Other than the fact that he looked different, he felt the same. It was as if he never changed. When she looked him over in closer detail, she could see the scar over his right cheekbone under his eye, another by his left ear, and...

"Clint. Your..." She stopped.

His ears. She could see an earpiece inserted in the surface of his canal. Not the standard, SHIELD-issued earwigs. It was an aid. It was an aid with a transparent wire trailing to the back of his earlobe, an aid that wasn't there ten years ago. He had it on both sides.

He frowned. "My what?"

"What happe-"

Clint had suddenly recoiled away in a defensive manner. It took her by surprise, but once she heard the boots sounding against the floor, she realized why he had jumped.

The newly unwelcomed guest cleared her throat by the door. "Hey, uh... Fitz has a lead on your side of the case. He was finding you."

She stood up and collected herself, and turned to face the door. "Oh, okay. I'll come with you."

The younger female agent of the two, whom was in a black tank with shoulder length hair and a slight asian tan, peered around Bobbi.

"Agent Barton, hi. Sorry about the..." She gestured to her entire body. "You were kind of torturing a friend of mine and I didn't know we were - you know - on the same team. Didn't really catch your face before I hit you."

The archer frowned. "Yeah. It's alright. Don't worry about it."

"Daisy Johnson." She shot her hand out, and when he flinched away from it by instinct, she immediately pulled it back. "My god, I'm so sorry. I forgot- Even though I did just apologize about-"

"It's fine, Daisy. Really," reassured Clint.

He was still wary about her hands, though. It was called for, since he had nearly died by her hands and whatever power that came with it.

She chuckled nervously, playing with her fingers behind her back. "I've heard a lot about you, and Agent Romanoff... and Thor, dreamy guy. And the Avengers, and all? I'm a fan, you know. Like, a big fan, _huge_ fan, like so huge I'm like an air conditioner... I should just stop talking now, shouldn't I?"

"Yeah..." Bobbi said, and grabbed Daisy by the arm and pulled her out of the room. "The hell was that?" He could hear them from where he sat, disoriented over the situation.

"I mean, he was very intimidating." The younger agent had said as they stalked out arm in arm.

Utterly confused by the unusual situation that had just unfolded, Clint stood up again and went back to throwing his stuff together, and packing for real this time around.

Just within earshot, he could pick up Daisy's sudden exclamation. It was slightly too loud when she had went, "He was your _what_?"

* * *

 **5 Months + 24 Days: Bargaining**

Throughout the meeting in the common room of the Bus, she only offered the occasional nod, and pitched in much less than usual. She wasn't even staring in the same direction as the rest of the team.

From her peripheral vision, she could see Hunter maneuvering on the outskirts of the crowd that gathered around the smart table, to nudge at Daisy's arm. It was probably because of how she and Daisy had walked in to FitzSimmon's lab together, the day before. She probably carried a troubled look on her face since then.

The two bickered for a moment and Daisy slapped at his wrist.

"We'll monitor their movements for now, until we get something solid. Daisy and Mack, prep a team to be ready for when we make a move. Sound good?" Coulson concluded. A chorus of yeah's and grunts and nods made its way around the table.

Soon after, the crowd had disbanded from the table and only the core members remained in the room. Fitz and Simmons lingered by the smart table, discussing specifics about their new lead while Coulson and May listened in and offered input. Mack had left the room to take a call.

Hunter was moving towards her now, with a clearly annoyed Daisy trailing along behind him. He rested an arm over her shoulder.

"Hey, love. How's your ex?" He asked, a charming grin plastered across his face.

Daisy made a face. "It still sounds weird. I just can't picture in my head. He's so serious. And an Avenger. I just- I can't- My mind is just not accepting this yet."

"It still feels weird, too." Bobbi added, then turned to her ex-husband. "And he's fine. Thanks for asking."

"Well Bobbi, when you call me Clint when you're dead drunk, or tired, he does become my business."

The younger Asian pursed her lips and stifled what seemed to be a laugh, eyes widening. She played it off nicely, but it caught Hunter's glance anyway. The man returned her amusement with a sneer.

"I'm sure she was just teasing," he added, still sneering at the younger agent.

"Maybe she wasn't." Daisy joked. He stared some more, and she shrugged.

"Well, maybe you just never forget your first love. It's _normal_ , people do that. Isn't that right, sweetheart?" He joggled Bobbi lightly.

"What was the name of _your_ first love, then?" Daisy challenged.

"Uh... Eleanor. Wait, no. I think it was Beatrice." Hunter frowned, the look on his face implying that he was thinking hard. "Or Emily. Rosie, maybe?"

The younger agent tilted her head and crossed her arms in front of her. She had a half smirk. "So what was it, Hunter?"

"You- I-" He stuttered, then unhooked his arm from around Bobbi and threw both hands in the air. "Come on. I don't- Lance Hunter doesn't remember names. Why would I need to, with my undefeated British charm? It's the other way around."

"Don't kid yourself, Teacup." Mack joined, fitting himself right beside Daisy. "Even with that ' _British charm_ ' of yours, not even a high school sweetheart?"

"I'm pretty sure it was Emily. Secondary school, Year 12, prettiest girl in my class. Her eyes were huge with this clear blue colour, and she smelled amazing. Like cinnamon." Hunter said, then clicked his tongue and nodded. "Yeah, it was Emily. I remember."

Bobbi finally scoffed, crossing her arms. "You're lying."

"No I'm not."

"You have a tell."

Hunter crossed his arms too, stepping further back from his ex-wife. "I don't have a tell."

"You do." May commented over his shoulder as she walked past, right by his ear. It took him by surprise and he jumped.

"What tell?"

"You do this tongue thing and nod, at the same time."

"What? I don't. I've never done that!"

"You used to do it all the time when we were married." She reminded. "I'd upset you, probably over something small, like having to go on another mission again, or about something domestic. You'd look upset, and when I asked about it, you would say that you were just fine, that nothing was wrong. And then you'd click your tongue and nod, and we'd get into this huge fight. Every time. For four years. You used to lie about the milk too."

"You knew about the milk?" He exclaimed, and she nodded in response, shrugging her shoulders in a nonchalant manner.

Hunter grew quiet, contemplating in deep thought about his next counter explanation. He tightened his already crossed arms even more, like a defiant child. "Fine, it wasn't an Emily. I mean, I slept with an Emily, and an Eleanor, and all those other girls back then, but I didn't love them. They were like flings."

"Lancelot Hunter, professional Casanova," said Daisy. Her hands gestured in a showy manner, like spreading a banner. "I knew you were extremely self-involved but I didn't think you were into that kind of hit and run."

"To be fair, I didn't even like them. They just threw themselves at me, and I graciously accepted. They didn't have enough substance for me to be attracted to. Besides, I was busy being a good student. I didn't have time for anything long-term, not that there was anyone I'd wanted to share it with, either."

"I just don't believe you didn't have a first love," said Mack. "There must have been somebody, someone you could have compared Bobbi to and said: Hey, that sucks, but at least Bobbi knows how to crack a guy's nuts, so let's marry her."

The Brit tried to comment, but was easily interrupted by the younger woman going, "Oh my god."

"What?" Hunter pressed.

"Bobbi's your first love, isn't she? You married your first love." Daisy marveled.

"No, I married a demonic hell-beast thing that took Bob's place and gave me _severe_ trust issues. We're separated now."

Daisy snickered and punched him in the arm. "You don't have to hide your little cupcake heart from us, Hunter. We all know you're a total softy."

"I'm not-"

"You're a softy." Mack reinforced.

Hunter rolled his eyes and clenched his fists as he groaned in frustration. "Argh, bloody hell! You guys make me want to shoot myself in the bloody fuckin' foot, you know that? I'm going to shoot all of you with ICERs if you don't shut the hell up."

About there, it would have been the prime time for his ex-wife to drop another sarcastic joke about how the self-indulgent man had 'shown some improvement' by openly sharing some of his sentiments, but when she didn't, Hunter knew something was clearly up.

Mack and Daisy guffawed out loud, celebrating their little victory in their corner. He remained irritated, and Bobbi took a step away from the noise with a cringe.

When he saw her do so, he closed the distance between them and stood in front of her, holding her by a shoulder. He squeezed her tenderly. "Hey, what's up? You alright there, love? You've been a little out of it lately."

"Aww, Mack, look!" The young female agent called out and drew attention to the Brit talking endearingly to her.

"My god, I'm going to ICE you!" He let go of Bobbi and started closing the distance towards Daisy instead, finger pointing right at her.

When he did, the two agents had started to bicker again, this time about ' _being too sensitive_ ', and about ' _sensitivity being overrated_ '. Bobbi wasn't quite in the mood to keep up with their argument and decided to excuse herself from the conversation completely and get some air.

Behind her, Daisy and Mack had tried to call out to her with an apology, and Hunter attempted to ask her where she was going, but she hadn't responded to any of them. The team had gathered now, collectively discussing why she was acting so out of sorts. She didn't stick around to eavesdrop any further.

Aimless walking had led her back to where she was a day ago, to the Trauma ward. From where she stood, by the nurses' station, she had a proper view of Room D5-271, and the patient sitting on the edge of the bed with his back facing her.

He was in different clothes now. The last time she had seen him, the archer had been in a loose tank and lounge slacks. It hadn't done much to hide the bandages around his chest, or the bruise that had spread out to his left upper back.

Now, he was clad in a proper grey Henley, three quartered sleeves wrapped fittingly around the peaks and dips in his arms. Half of a black leather jacket rested sloppily over the edge of the over-bed table. When he stood up to pace with his fingers raking through his tousled hair, she could see he was in coal black trousers as well.

Bobbi had to admit, the man aged with grace. Compared to his eighteen-year-old dressing style of crew neck cotton tees and sloppily waisted cargos to fit his skinny frame, this new look definitely added a certain edge to him. Dangerous, and not quite the juvenile he used to seem to be. How could anyone look harmless with arms like those?

"Those arms, right?" A voice interrupted her focus. "I bet you're wishing Hunter had arms just like that, right about now."

She chuckled subtly. "Hunter's are just fine. I'm thinking more about how those arms actually fit into a tux. Do they, even?"

"Barely. We used to get them tailor-made at Trudell & Asher's. Pissed off the tailor a lot. Eventually, Fury decided on an in-house bespoke tailor."

"Huh." The agent nodded. "He just... He's so different now. Every time I look at him, it's like I'm looking at a stranger."

"Well, time does that to people. It's been twelve, nearly thirteen years. The last time you ever saw each other proper was in '04. That was a really long time ago."

"I guess I thought he'd look the same, at least remotely. I hoped it. Maybe I wanted it to be like this because, then, it wouldn't feel like so much has changed." She said, in a slightly disappointed tone.

The man shrugged, the movement in his shoulders hidden under his usual suit and tie attire. "We can both agree, time's a bitch."

It instigated one more bout of subtle laughter. She managed a second chuckle, and a scoff. She continued watching Clint from behind the station, pacing up and down his ward, shaking away the tension from his hands, and willing away the look of exhaustion in his face.

She also watched as he removed the hearing aids from both his ears and dislodged the additional pieces behind each lobe. He left it on the over-bed table, beside his jacket. Then, he sat back down and rested his elbows on his bouncing knees, head in hands and restless.

He eventually hurried himself into the ward's bathroom, where she couldn't watch him anymore. The suit beside her was evidently watching him too, and when he had left to the bathroom, the man turned to watch her instead.

"Did you talk to him yet?"

"Yeah, two days back. Did you?"

"Nope," said Coulson. "I'm probably the last person he wants to see right now."

"You should still talk to him anyway. It's better late than never." She suggested.

The older man had a thoughtful look upon his face. It seemed like he was really heeding her advice and considering the possibility of it. "Was that what you did? How was it?"

"Angry, at first. But then it was good. Not all good, but somewhat good."

"Then what's bothering you?"

"What?"

"What's bothering you?" Coulson repeated his question. "You've been out of it the past two days. It's not really a _somewhat good_ kind of look on your face."

Bobbi frowned. "I mean, the talking was good. He probably got some kind of closure he needed, and so did I. But..."

"But?"

"But then I saw them. His aids," she said. A look of realization dawned on the suited man. "He used to have the most perfect hearing. He could even hear the gears in his watch and when it was in need of a tuning. He could spot the faintest of wind drafts with his ears. So is it fully gone?"

"Yeah, full deafness. Permanent, on both sides." There was an underlying tone of regret in his voice.

She could feel her insides flip and flinch at the mention of this diagnosis. "Was it recent?"

"No. Happened about a year and a half after you left. He's been living with it since '06."

"What happened?"

"His mission went south." Coulson sighed. "Natasha was nursing a broken leg, and a freshly healed back fracture, so he had gone in alone. They caught him, tortured him for seven days while we were struggling to get coordinates to send an exfil team."

"Shit." She flinched again.

He mirrored the same reaction, clearly disturbed by the memory he was reliving. "He hasn't talked about what really happened, but our best guess was that they had taken an iron rod to his face and struck his ears hard enough. It was violent, really bad. When we found him, one side of his face was caved in and the blood was just everywhere. He had zygomatic fracture to the right side of his face too, trapped his eye and his jaw. He was out of it for three months."

"How was he? After the incident."

"It was a bad two years for him. Your crash, and then being bed-ridden and losing his hearing completely." He said. "But he didn't show it. He just kind of powered through it, to the point it concerned me. He was out on his next mission, freshly deaf, by the fourth month of his rehabilitation."

"He still didn't talk about it with you?"

"Not much. Natasha helped him out most of the time. If there was any trouble at all, he shared most of it with her."

Bobbi nodded in understanding, but still bothered by what she had heard. She couldn't help but feel that it was way more brutal than it had to be. A twinge of guilt twisted a knot in her gut.

She looked away and back into the room, and realized that he was back on the bed again. Clint was checking for the time on his phone every 5 seconds. It was then that she managed to make the silent observation that he didn't wear watches anymore. The knot twisted deeper.

She could sense the way he was acting, with the jumpiness and nervousness that came with bouncing knees and restless pacing, as well as his impatient checking of the time. Even watching from afar, it built a certain kind of anxiety in her too.

"Why do you think he's so anxious in there? It's like he can't wait to leave." She asked.

She could remember how they used to skip the extra classes at the Academy to venture the infirmary and hide in empty wards. Sometimes to make out, sometimes to beat boredom, and sometimes just for fun.

It was hard to understand his fascination with hospitals back then, up till the one day he had revealed to her that the hospital setting felt like home. He then explained about his four-year lodging in an institution that offered him food and a place to sleep, after his brother had died and he was rendered homeless.

"He hates hospitals." Coulson explained.

"He used to say that it made him feel at home."

The man paused, and sighed. "Now it gives him panic attacks. He's fine, on a good day. But there aren't much good days. Ever since his ears, he... It's just been like this."

"I didn't..." She didn't know. Not that she had expected to know much about Clint anymore, given the years between them. But still, "He wasn't like this."

To her knowledge, he didn't use to be like this. He was a happy kid, fresh off the street, with a kind of tainted innocence that made him all the more attractive. He was the one that could make a joke out of any bad situation.

Now, he was just... some part broken. It was hard to notice, and even harder to watch once she did, but if she looked hard enough, she could see this brokenness in the way he carried himself. He walked with weights on his back, and his eyes were dry with waking hours, like sleep haunted him.

"No, he wasn't." Coulson agreed.

"How did you face him? After you'd seen him change from the boy you picked up, to this _vessel_? He's literally a shadow of who he used to be, and I don't- I just don't know how. I don't know how to talk to him again."

"To be honest, I don't know. I guess I just did. Tried my best to be wherever he needed me to be, and did whatever needed to be done. He changed, but it didn't mean it wasn't still him. He was still who he believed he was, and we worked from there."

Bobbi paused for a moment, letting it all sink in. Then, she turned to the older man again. She looked straight into his eyes. "Did I cause this? What if I caused this?"

"No," he caught her glance once, then glanced away and back once more before finally turning away. He was hiding something, and she could tell. Liars made good tellers and, of course, even better catchers. "It was just a matter of time."

"A matter of time, before what?"

"Before change happens. You can't expect to come into this job and leave whole. Sometimes it's just faster for others," said Coulson. "It's good, that you and Hunter left."

"It feels different."

"Different, but better?"

"Yeah, a little. After this whole thing rolls over, we're probably moving to a small town back in Kent."

"Kent. That's where he grew up, right?"

"Yeah. I think we're meeting his parents. He told me his mum bakes the nicest little cakes with tea. I'm supposed to teach her how to make a proper casserole, because she thinks casseroles are stews."

Coulson chuckled. "He's domesticating you. Didn't picture him to be the kind."

"Don't talk about my teacup that way." She joked. "Besides, it's fine. After this, we've got nothing else to do anyway. Teaching a cooking class on casseroles would probably be the most interesting thing I do all year."

It was almost a groan, which made the older agent laugh once more.

"Does he know?" He nodded back into Room D5-271. "That you've left. That you're leaving for good."

"No. I didn't think talking about coming back from the dead, and then about getting disavowed, would have gone well in a single sitting. He just knows I'm leaving again."

"You planning to tell him?"

"Nah. Besides, he wouldn't care. He has Natasha, his team. He doesn't need to know," she admitted. "What about you? Are you planning to settle down here and let Daisy take the reigns back at base?"

"Nope. I'm not their handler anymore. Plus, the Avengers have the Cap. I wouldn't be of any use here. Maybe it's for the best, for all of us." He said, and shrugged once again.

In the room, Clint stood up abruptly. He checked his phone for the time for the last time, and finally grabbed his jacket from the table and stormed out of the room.

From where the two SHIELD agents stood, they could see how his face was flushed, down to his neck where the blotches disappeared under his shirt. His eyes were bloodshot with tire too. Heavy, tender bags rested beneath his lower lid.

They both shied away from his view as he walked towards the exit and into the main hallway. He didn't notice them at all. They were still quite obviously visible by the Nurses' Station despite trying to hide, but from the looks of it, he looked a little too caught up inside his own mind.

When a striking doctor called after him, on the way back from his Trauma ward rounds, the archer didn't respond. Neither did either agent continue with their prior conversation, and solely spent their time watching the doctor glancing down to hallway after Clint in a perplexed manner.

It would be only when the doctor walked into his empty ward, that they would all realize that his hearing aids were still on the table.

* * *

 **5 Months + 24 Days: Bargaining**

It didn't have the same effect anymore. The feeling of gravity pulling at his body from where he stood, or the cool air that felt like a Russian winter enveloping his body and cooling his lungs from the inside. The stronger drafts of wind at the top used to frown on the noise in his head. The sound of his tapping fingers was lost to the wind.

While it used to be therapeutic and calming, and exhilarating even, it just didn't have the same effect anymore. If anything, it felt blunted. He stood by the edge of the roof anyway, and took in whatever little comfort it gave him. The lack of parapets and ledges was an added thrill bonus.

The Stark Tower roof was the best spot in Manhattan. He looked over. The exterior of the tower was bright enough, but he still couldn't make out the pavement on the ground from this height. Everything just seemed to run on a gradient into blackness.

He heard the door slide open, creating a subtle vacuum. "Don't do it!" A voice yelled from behind, growing louder as it got closer. It was nearly comical. The man to the voice clapped him on the back. "Seriously though, don't."

Clint turned by a fraction to look at the man. "I'm not. I never said I was going to."

He dug out the current earpieces that were given to him upon arriving to the building, and replaced them with the newer ones that Tony held out to him now. He pushed them into his ear canals, where they sat comfortably and perfectly out of sight.

Tony put a hand on his shoulder and looked him dead in the eye, frowning. Again, everything this man did was comical, like a joke to the archer.

"You don't need words." The mechanic said, in the most deadpan manner, like he believed it. "It's that look you have on your face, in your eyes. You know, the one crazy people have right before they slice their wrists, or shoot themselves, or jump off a ledge."

The archer glared. "Seriously?"

Tony then released the grasp on his shoulder, and broke from his glare. "Case in point, you're literally standing on a ledge, on a roof, on _my_ roof, which is about 93 stories from the pavement."

"I'm fine."

"Should I be worried?" It sounded like genuine concern.

Clint sighed. "I said I'm fine, Tony. I'm just a little tired. I needed some fresh air. Your roof has fresh air."

"Falling down the outside of my roof has fresh air too. Like, gushing fresh air."

"Don't push it." He groaned curtly. His jaw was half-set.

"I am going to trust you, because I am your friend." The mechanic backed off and patted him on the back sincerely. "But if I end up having to clean up your mush off my sidewalk one day, I'm dragging you out of hell to kill you twice over."

"You won't have to." He sat down on the roof, fingers now tapping against the material of the roof. Again, the sound was still lost to the strong winds.

Tony cringed. "Okay- God, I should have put a ledge on this thing. This freaks me out." He slowly sat down beside the archer, keeping his eyes straight ahead and resisting the urge to look down. "So, last night."

"What about last night?"

If he was taken aback and expressed it physically, the archer chose not to see it, and didn't. Instead, he played with the sleeve of his shirt, rolling it up neatly.

"You said you wanted to meet. I went to find you," Tony prompted.

"Oh, shit. I did it, didn't I? I'm really sorry about that, man." He apologized.

The mechanic shared a tight lipped smile and shook his head. "It's alright. Do you maybe want to... talk about it?"

"Yeah," Clint rolled his sleeves back down. "I just lost time, you know. I was, um... I was out clearing my head. I completely forgot we were supposed to meet. Didn't mean to blow you off. Sorry, again."

"Oh," he frowned. It evidently took the older man a moment to process what he'd heard. Had he never heard an apology before? "That's okay. Do you feel better today? _Clearer_?"

"I don't know." The archer said. He pulled his phone out of his pocket and checked the time. He left it on the ledge after he did. "I guess so? It's always been a little muddy. Why do you ask?"

"Ah, nothing big. Just worried me a little when you didn't show."

"Sorry I made you worry. Haven't been feeling great, to be honest. Hope you didn't stick around, though."

"Yeah, I went to get a drink after a bit. Came back home, ate Chinese take out."

"I'm sorry. I promise I'll remember next time." He said.

"It's fine, really," responded Tony. "About not feeling too great, and being all tired and grumpy these days, what's up with that?"

"Side effect from dying." Clint shrugged nonchalantly.

"I'm being serious, Pocahontas. What's up?" The older man jostled his arm, which had already been throbbing the entire afternoon. He chuckled lightly at the man's concern, also playing off the wince that left him by instinct.

He massaged his left arm and sighed. "Got a lot on my mind, I guess."

"You did always have that resting face, like deep shower thoughts, just even out of the shower. Got more to think about now?"

"Yeah. With Natasha, and the mission in Tunisia that I fucked up, and, you know... some other stuff."

"No, I don't know. What other stuff?"

Clint looked over. The man was sitting cross-legged now, resting one elbow on his lap and his chin on his fist, frowning out into the distance. "Just found out my ex-wife didn't die. Thought she did. At first, I thought I was going nuts, but I touched her. She was real. Oh, and Phil's alive too."

"Woah," Tony turned to face him, his eyes widening. "Shit. Now I wanna kill him, for real." There was a hint of hurt in his voice, probably from the same betrayal that the archer originally felt.

"Yeah, well. Everything doesn't really help with sleeping."

"How many hours are you sleeping?"

"Around 6."

"A night?"

"A week."

The mechanic paused, no words leaving his lips. "Th-That is... not healthy. _Very_ not healthy." He stammered, and started trying to stand. Key word, trying. "You definitely need a drink."

"My liver just failed." Clint reminded. "Like all other parts of my body. Side effect from dying, remember?"

"Oh, right. So then... what are we supposed to do? What do normal, non-alcoholic people do?"

"What would Banner do?"

"Sit in a comfy chair with a notepad in his lap, in those god awful glasses. And you'd be reclined over on a couch. And he'd talk. And you'd talk. Just a lot of talking." Tony remembered.

The archer made a face. "Nope, not happening."

"We could just sit around, I guess?" The older man suggested.

Clint shrugged in tentative agreement. The two sat quietly atop the roof. While the younger of the two simply sat stoically in his place, drilling his fingers into the metal of the roof repeatedly, the mechanic spent the incredibly stretched three minutes daring himself to look over the edge, shying away whenever he did.

As the silence settled, and the drafts of wind had slowed significantly, the incessant tapping of Clint's fingers was the only sound that existed in that time. It made the mechanic feel extremely uncomfortable, and he shifted repeatedly.

"Shit," Tony finally broke the silence. "We're so bad at this, aren't we?"

"God, yeah. I would kill for a drink right now. Wish I hadn't fucked my body up." The archer groaned.

"I won't tell. Nobody would know."

"I'm getting tested, tomorrow afternoon. Can't take anything too damaging, doctor's orders."

The mechanic scowled in thought. Then, he suddenly jumped, digging in his pockets with a sense of accomplishment. "Well, doctor never said a word about anything 'medicinal', did he?"

Between his fingers were two rolls of weed. Clint scoffed at the offer, taking one. " _Medicinal_ , you said? No, he certainly did not."

Tony held a lighter out to his blunt, setting the stick ablaze on one end. A sweet smell wafted in the air and spread across his tongue, and Clint sucked his first draft deeply. The man then lit his own blunt up and took a draft of his own.

The silence this time around was much easier to get by, as they both smoked their blunts. Damn, these were incredibly strong blunts. The archer nearly chuckled to himself at the thought. The deep ache over his left chest stopped him from doing so.

After the first third of the blunt was burnt through, Tony turned over again. "How's Natasha? Heard she's being discharged." He said.

"Yeah, she says she's getting better. Or at least, she wants to." The younger man replied bluntly.

The other man stared. "You make it sound like it's a mistake. What? You think it's wrong?"

"I didn't say that-"

"You don't believe her."

"Hey, I believe her. If she says she wants to get better, I believe she does and I'm happy for her. She's my wife, Stark, for god's sake," Clint chided. "But you don't always get what you want. Not in this world."

"You don't want her to get better?"

"Again, I didn't say that. Did the blunt blunt your genius or what, asshole?" He scolded once more and punched Tony in the arm. Tony cussed right back at him as he grabbed as tightly as he could to the ledge and the roll. "I want her to get better. I just don't think she can."

"Why not?"

"Good things just don't happen around here anymore. We're all cashed out."

The mechanic rolled his eyes. "God, you're depressing. But I still don't understand. Why don't you think she could get better?"

"She's fought this long before I came along. And every time she barely got through it, basically hung on by her fingertips."

"She has you, now. She has us. I'm sure she can get through it again."

"It's worse this time round, Tony, and I can't shake the feeling that she can't do it anymore. I've talked, about life out of here. About a future somewhere else. She seems glad. But I don't know, man. It scares me." The archer admitted, more than he'd liked. He kicked himself after a delayed realization of whatever crap he had been saying to the man earlier.

"But you wouldn't know, would you?" The older man reassured. When Clint didn't reply, or give an acknowledging grunt, he repeated the question, looking straight at him.

Clint didn't return that glance, and took another drag at the blunt again.

"I guess I'm just afraid that one day, she's going to snap, and I won't be there to keep her together."

"I know."

"That one day she's going to put a gun in her mouth and like how it tastes, and that she's going to pull the trigger. There wouldn't be anything left to save." He explained. "Knives, they're one thing. You can stitch a cut but you can't put back together a brain that's been blown to bits."

The mechanic watched as he described the explanation so vividly, undeterred concern still bubbling in his stomach. Or maybe it was the marijuana. But still, it made him feel ticklish and uncomfortable.

It even left him more unnerved when the archer sighed sharply and stroke an unsettling smile, no doubt coupled with a perplexed frown. "But yeah, I guess I wouldn't know."

He noticed the archer's fingers starting to drum against the metal once again. The sound made him feel skittish.

"Clint," he said, glancing down at the fingers, and then back up to his face again and again, for about three times. The man breathed in a hit before continuing. "We're friends, right?"

"Or so you've called. I wouldn't put it past us just being drinking buddies. But hey, sharing pot is an upgrade." The archer joked.

"So you'd tell me the truth if I asked, as a friend."

"I'll try not to be my pathologically lying self, yes." This garnered a click of the tongue from the older man.

"How would you do it?"

"Do what?"

"Kill yourself. How would you do it?"

The archer shot Tony an incredulous glare. "The fuck?"

"I just need to know what I have to look out for. Natasha is sick and you think she's not going to last. I've seen friends off themselves after their partners died, and they were much less in love than you two are. I don't want that to happen here, so I need to know what I have to look out for, just in case." He explained.

"Like I told you the past ten times, I'm fine, okay?" Clint said, brows still furrowed. It took a good ten second stare-down at the older man's face to realize that this was a genuine concern, and an actual question.

The archer sighed and relented. "I'd use a gun. Not a shotgun, that's too messy. Probably a handgun, something I'd already have on me or in my house. One round, from under my chin or in my mouth. It'll be instant, cleaner, maybe a bit of splatter but I'd do it in the right place where the stains won't stick."

"Have you-"

"No, I haven't thought about it, not for a long time."

"Then how would you know exactly how you'd want to do it?"

Clint paused. Tony waited. The archer bit his lip. "Because I did think about it. A long time ago. I was in a bad place, wasn't in the right frame of mind. I'd just lost what was left of my family. I was alone, without people I loved. And I just wanted to stop being alone." He admitted.

"I'm sorry I asked." Tony apologized.

"It's alright." He said. He checked the time on his phone again. "I'm sorry I made you concerned enough to ask. I promise it won't come to that, not again."

The older man nodded in acknowledgement. "Did you go through with it, back then?"

"I did," the confession left a pang in Tony's chest. "Not with a gun, if you're wondering. But I'm not telling you how I did it. What I can say is that it was still bad enough that they pronounced me clinically dead for six minutes. It caused deficits, but nothing permanent."

"But... Why?"

The archer looked down to his hands and his lap, putting the blunt between his teeth and taking in a long and deep drag. "Like I told you. I was alone. I wanted it to stop."

"Did you regret it?"

"No. Why would I?" Clint deflected. "I was desperate, and that was my ticket out. While it wasn't exactly the 'out' I was intending for, but it got me what I needed."

"Help?"

"Understanding," clarified the younger of the two. "I learned that I didn't want to just be the helpless kid from Iowa anymore. I understood what I needed to get out of that dump. Made sure I never went back since."

They both fell into a quiet silence after that. Clint inhaled the remainder of the blunt and let the smoke out of his nose, bringing the burnt tip of the reduced blunt to his eyes and watching it crackle. He checked the time, yet again.

Tony, on the other hand, sat pondering. Maybe it was the blunt, or the fact that he had zero normal social cues. He was at a loss for words on how exactly to respond to a man who had just described his first act of suicide with little to no regret.

He inhaled from the blunt as well, and choked on the smoke. "If it's worth anything, I'm really glad you found what you needed, Clint. Drinking wouldn't be quite the same without you. I'm glad you're here."

The younger man laughed, and threw the bud of his own finished blunt down the side of the building. He started standing when he checked his phone and saw that he had received a text.

"Yeah, well, I wouldn't want anyone to drink century-old scotch all alone, would I? It's against my better judgement. Goes against everything I've ever worked for." He quipped. "Anyway, I got to be somewhere. See you when I see you?"

Tony smiled. "Yeah, sure. You go ahead, I'll just be... here." He said.

His legs trembled at the thought of having to stand up by the side of the edge again. Sitting down was hard enough, and standing back up was definitely worse.

Clint clapped him on the back and bid him farewell before running off into the penthouse to get his jacket from the bar top. The archer didn't know exactly how long Tony had sat there on the roof before he made it back in.

* * *

 **TBC**


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N: I have just realized how all over the place the timeline of this story is, when compared against the MCU timeline. Really sorry about that! Your thoughts on your likes and dislikes, and any ideas or insights are much appreciated. Enjoy!**

* * *

 _ **"It's like I'm fighting behind these walls,**_

 _ **And hiding through metaphors.**_

 _ **This is real, these are flaws."**_

 _ **\- Unworthy, Vancouver Sleep Clinic**_

* * *

 **5 Months + 24 Days: Bargaining**

It took Tony a full 45 minutes to get back to the inside of his penthouse. Pepper was waiting for him, making herself hot tea by the pantry of the penthouse bar.

If she had been having a fun time being amused by his 45-minute struggle off the edge of the roof with his chest to the roof surface, he didn't want to know. If she did, she hid it well when she met him by the door to the roof.

Tony closed the door behind him and grabbed on to a sturdy counter, one hand over his heart as he bent over. "My god, that was intense." He panted.

She kept a straight, endearing face as she went over and rubbed huge circles around his back, still sipping tea from her cup.

"That man is 200 different kinds of crazy! I don't think my heart can take this anymore." His face scrunched up as he took two deep breaths.

Pepper couldn't keep the amusement from her face for long. "You walk on that roof just fine with your suit." She chuckled.

"Because I can fly in a suit!" He retorted. "I was completely non-iron on that roof tonight. The only thing that's gonna catch me if I fall is the pavement floor."

"Always so dramatic," she smirked. Pepper watched his eyes and the way the rich coffee ground colour in them seemed to light up when he grinned back sheepishly. "So, anything?"

The grin left as soon as it graced his face, the light in his eyes darkening a significant bit. She backed away and put down her cup. "What? What happened? Did he say anything?" She pushed.

"Yeah, we talked," Tony replied. His reply was followed with a long sigh. He walked over to the bar top and poured himself a glass of scotch. "He remembers that he blew me off last night."

"Really?"

"Yeap." He emphasized the p with a pop, and took a sip from his glass.

Pepper frowned, picking her warmer cup up in both her hands and moving over to stand across the man from the other side of the bar. "He doesn't-"

"Nope." He shook his head, squinting into the spirit in his glass. "He said he went to _clear his head_."

"Did you tell him? About what happened?"

"I didn't."

"Do you think it helps? Not telling him?"

"He doesn't even remember where he was last night, Pepper, let alone what happened. He has a problem, and I don't want to make it even more problematic."

She pulled a face. "You said he was drunk right? When you guys met last night."

"Dead drunk."

"Maybe he only said those things he did because he was drunk. Maybe he wasn't thinking rationally. Maybe when he isn't dead drunk, he's okay. I mean, he looks fine. He looked fine on the way out."

He set his glass down on the counter and stared incredulously at his wife. "So we're not supposed to worry? After yesterday?"

"All I'm saying is that maybe we don't have to worry about him so much. Clint's a rational guy-"

"On a good day." Tony added.

"Yes, on a good day. We never did stop to think that he didn't mean what he said because he was extremely drunk."

He chugged down the rest of the scotch in his glass and poured a second glass for himself. "Yeah well, he doesn't have a lot of good days either. So what? We don't take him seriously, just banking on the off-chance that he has better days?"

It was almost sarcastic.

"Tony..." She said, in a warning tone.

When he exhaled, he was exasperated. "Pepper! You weren't there! You didn't look him in the eye and see exactly how much he'd meant it, that he wanted it. I don't care that the man's a drunk. If anything, I'll drag him to an AA meeting myself. But what happens when he wants it, even when he's sober?"

"If it happens..." She reasoned.

" _When_ it happens." He corrected.

"But we wouldn't-"

"He wanted to die, okay?" He said. Even the words spooked him out and left a hollowness in his chest, like it would take time for him to believe it. There was a pregnant pause. "He stood on the ledge, a drink in hand, and he told me he wanted to jump. He told me she was as good as dead, and he wanted to join her because there was nothing left for him here."

The words seemed to dry Pepper out too. She took two sips from her cup as he fumed across from her. "She's still alive. She's recovering." She said quietly.

"He doesn't believe that. He doesn't think she can."

"He told you that last night?"

"Just now. Don't know if he was completely sober, but it seemed like it," said Tony. He wiped his nose roughly. "He doesn't need to say it, but it's as if he's just waiting for her to die, so that he can go with her."

"What else did he tell you?" Pepper asked, pulling him back on topic.

The mechanic paused. It wasn't exactly something he wanted to share, but to be honest, the revelation wasn't words he could quite keep to himself. It was already chewing him up inside and out, just like what he had experienced the night before.

When she had caught into his hesitation, she pushed even further with a: "What?"

Tony hadn't taken a sip from his second glass, but decided to chug it down straight and bare. It burned in his throats and made his eyes water. His hand was hovering around the bottle for a third glass, when she gave him a warning look.

He placed his glass in the sink and began to rinse it instead. Pepper continued to sip on her tea as she waited for a response.

After about five minutes of silence between them, he finally spoke up. "He did it," said Tony. There was a foreign, sour taste in his mouth. "He admitted he did it. He didn't even regret it."

It gave her a sick feeling in her stomach too. She set down her near-empty cup on the counter and sat down on the stool. He picked it up, and rinsed it as well.

"When?"

"Long time ago. After his family... You know."

"Poor Clint." She sighed, clasping her fingers together.

"Yeah..." He breathed out a heavy sigh too, riddled with frustration. "Says he's _a-okay_ now, though."

"But you don't believe him." It wasn't quite a question, as it was a statement. She looked into his eyes.

He stared back. The coffee ground colour in his eyes were much darker than they were before. He was angry, and Pepper could tell. "I'd be a fool if I believed someone like him. That man consciously lies for a living, it's his livelihood."

"Can't you give him the benefit of the doubt, Tony?" She pleaded quietly. "You're so hell-bent on saving him that you're letting yourself revel in his problems, his darkness. I, for one, believe that he can handle himself just fine. But if he's really going down, I'm not letting him drag you down too."

"He's not dragging me down."

"Yeah, well it looks a lot like it from where I'm standing."

"Pepper..." He started, circling around the bar counter to stand in front of her stool.

She heaved a sigh. "I understand if you wanted closure from what happened last night. He said he was fine, you have it now. But you're digging a hole you can't cover up anymore. You're getting invested. You always do."

"I just don't want him to spiral into a dump he can't come back from." Tony reasoned, rubbing her shoulders and cradling her face in his undried hands. "He's my friend. He's family."

"And you're my husband. You're _my_ family." Pepper grabbed his hand from her cheek and held it in both her hands, her head hanging low to watch her fingers. "If he's really that far gone and you're still invested in trying to save him... When he's gone, when both of them are gone, it will destroy you. And whatever hurts you, hurts me too. I'm not allowing things to come to that."

"I won't let it come to that, I promise."

"Yes, it won't." She said. She looked up again to meet his now-softer eyes with hardened ones of her own. "Until something happens, I want you to trust him. Trust that he's okay. Stop digging. Take a step back and give yourself a break. If you're not capable of doing it for yourself, then do it for him, and me."

Tony was completely dumbfounded by her ultimatum. The last time she ever gave him an ultimatum, they had taken a long break from their relationship as he had started spending more and more time in the new Avengers facility.

If there was one thing he learned from that ultimatum, it was that he could never mess with Pepper Potts. She would mean exactly what she said. It took him less than a year to come running back to her again after the Accords.

"You know I'm not splitting my time away from you, Pep. I learned from that, and I'll never ever do that again."

"I just need you to say yes, okay?" She requested. "For me."

It didn't take Tony long to relent with an, "Okay."

* * *

 **5 Months + 26 Days: Bargaining**

He could hear his phone vibrate against the surface of the floor, a mere two feet away from him. It was about the sixteenth time he received a text message, not counting the other five phone calls he had been receiving the rest of the time.

He didn't even try to reach it.

He did try, about three messages and one phone call earlier, but his head was throbbing and his eyes were so out of whack that they couldn't focus one bit. Everything was a blur, and every sound through his aids were swollen and distant.

He wasn't quite sure how long ago was his last attempt at getting up to get the phone. The past few times ended with him giving up completely and collapsing back onto the floor where it was cold to his touch.

Clint was drained, so completely drained. The only times he ever felt like this any time in the past two years were when he was drugged with a sedative, or when he had lost significant volumes of blood for it to be a natural sedative in itself, it being one he wouldn't have awakened from.

As he lay flat on the cold surface of the floor, exposing every last bit of skin he deemed possible to cool, he sighed. It was jagged and rough. Each breath was shaky, like the rest of his body.

He was trembling from the inside. Yet, he didn't quite know if it was because he was too hot, too cold, too hungry, or too exhausted.

On the outside, he felt feverish. His skin was completely drenched in perspiration, and so were his shirt and trousers. When he took a look at himself, using the bare minimum light in the bathroom which shone in from the outside, he realized his shirt was ripped in places where it fitted tightly to his skin, and he had thrown his belt somewhere that he couldn't quite find from where he lay. His trousers were unbuttoned and unzipped, resting loosely at his hips.

He rested his head back down to the floor, and lay there for a bit longer. He wiped the moisture of his face.

For every breath he inhaled, he held it there a second longer each time before exhaling out again. He did so, until his heart stopped hammering in his chest and reduced to a slower rate. Despite all that, his chest still felt constricted.

There was an undying ache running down the entire left hand side of his upper body. There was also a throbbing ache at the side of his head, intensity of the ache varying depending on how he moved.

After he felt ready enough, with his still trembling hands, the archer tried to prop himself up with his left hand hooked onto the sink weakly. A searing pain tore through his left chest, and his arm gave way. He slammed back down to the floor again, his ribs crashing into the hard surface and the sharp tip of a utility pipe tearing a superficial gash through the side of his left wrist.

Clint winced in pain and reeled over the pain in his left side. His left wrist started to throb too, with significant bleeding. He couldn't quite feel the gash, though. The throbbing was minimal. It dulled out.

There wasn't much light in the bathroom, so he didn't quite know what else was around him now. He felt around his area with his right hand, and managed to reach the edge of his phone by his fingertips.

Hey, at least he had his phone now, and it didn't require much bodily effort to reach it.

The archer stretched his right arm a little to get a better grip on his phone, and finally managed to pull it over to himself. He sank back into the floor again and took another deep breath.

Tilting his head back, he saw a wall near to him, with no obstacles between where he was now, and where the wall would be. He grabbed onto his phone and used his right arm and both his legs to propel him towards the wall where he could sit upright. He pulled himself to a sitting position by the toilet, and rested his bleeding arm over the open seat.

He took another shaky breath.

Clint's eyes were still coming into focus and recalibrating his sight in the dark. He squeezed his eyes shut and open them again, each time regaining more and more of his clear vision. His head still hurt.

Finally, he retrieved his phone and checked the time. It was half past ten. Then, he looked at the calls and messages that he had received:

Three phone calls from the infirmary, from yesterday. One phone call from Tony late last night, and another one from Natasha earlier this morning.

Five messages from the infirmary, two from Fury, three from Michaelson, one from Wanda, two from Tony and three from Natasha.

He opened Fury's messages first, which were: _"My office, today,_ _3PM_ _."_ and, _"Call me."_ which came after said 3PM. That was from yesterday. Clint groaned. He definitely had something coming for him for missing that meeting.

He didn't bother with the messages from the infirmary and Michaelson.

Next was Wanda Maximoff's message: " _Did you call me?"_ He couldn't remember, so he didn't offer a response, but made a mental note to check his call logs later on.

Clint then opened Tony's messages: _"Hey."_ It was followed by an immediate _"Hang out_ _on Friday_ _?"_. He left that message hanging as well.

He opened Natasha's. The first one read: _"_ _Remember your check-up._ _"_ from late yesterday morning. After which, it was followed by a second message from this morning, saying: _"You alive there? Michaelson dropped by saying you missed your check-up. What happened?"_.

After about an hour from her second text, she dropped another most recent text from thirty minutes ago, which read: _"Clint, you there? Are you alright?"_

He drafted out a reply back to her, saying: _"I'm fine. Was busy, lost track of time. Sorry."_

The archer then set his phone down on the sink ledge without waiting for her next reply, and with more strength this time around, helped himself from off the floor with his right arm. His left wrist was beginning to dry out, and the gash was clotting.

He paced over to the other side of the bathroom where the light switch was, supporting himself against the walls and bathroom facilities as he did. When he turned on the lights, it revealed a huge mess on the floor.

Glass from the broken sink mirror drizzled all around the sink top and floor area. Drops of fresh blood and smudged blotches of dried blood riddled the central area of the bathroom floor. Shreds of his shirt were scattered around. Needles and syringes, one intact and another broken, contributed to the mess. His belt wasn't even in the bathroom at all.

The mess reminded him very much of how he'd found Natasha here, cold and bleeding and almost dead. He tried but failed to push the thought from his head. He walked out instead.

In his apartment's bedroom and living room, the curtains were majestically open and the morning light shone through brightly. He flinched at the intensity. It hurt his head and eyes.

As he looked around, he realized the entire mess made in the living room. The bedroom was fine, other than a jacket and a belt resting around on his bed. The living room, however, looked thrashed.

Tables were overturned, even more glasses were shattered. In the kitchen area, three blackened metal spoons lay on the counter top. His medicine cabinet was ransacked open and bottle upon bottle of various medications were strewn across the counter and floor.

He heaved a troubled sigh at the mess, and walked back in to the bedroom's wardrobe mirror to get a good look at himself.

Not surprising, he looked like shit. His eyes were bloodshot, with shadows under them. There was a gash on the right side of his head. When he touched it, he was still bleeding. Pieces of the sink mirror were still embedded in his scalp. The cuts bled when he pulled the shards out.

After doing so, Clint sat himself down on his bed. He hung his head in his hands, in between his knees. His head was still throbbing, and his entire body still shivering. He felt very much like he was about to puke. His stomach did flips inside of him, but he powered through.

Then, he got up and managed whatever mess he could clean. The living room, the kitchen, the bathroom. He felt like he was about to collapse, and his left arm felt like it was about to literally fall off, but still he continued.

Once he was done, he took a hot shower, which did stop the trembling for a few moments, but not for long. He washed away the blood that had dried over on his body. He washed himself clean of the bile and perspiration that had made his skin slick. The smell disgusted him. He shampooed and soaped himself twice over.

He scratched at the new lifted scar along his ribs, right under his arm. It was black, like a tattoo, but scarred over like a burn. When he couldn't scratch the scar away or draw any skin or blood, he gave up.

After showering and drying himself off, and putting on fresh slacks, he sutured himself up. His shivering hands didn't really help with maintaining a clean and neat suture, but at least they still did the job. At times, he had to hold his own breath just to steady his hands.

He sutured the several long gashes in his scalp, as well as the cut on the side of his wrist. He wrapped a tight bandage around his wrist.

The archer then looked into his wardrobe for a long-sleeved pullover, to cover his arms up to his bandaged wrist. Thank god he hadn't ruined this long-sleeved shirt too. The rest were either in another apartment, in his ward, in the laundry, or damaged and in the trash. This was his last one here.

As soon as he was all set, he searched for and retrieved his wallet and his keys, and checked his phone one last time on the way out. Natasha had left him another message twelve minutes back: _"It's okay. Coming over?"_

 _"On my way,"_ he replied, and locked the mess in his apartment, and the apartment door behind him.

* * *

 **5 Months + 26 Days: Bargaining**

"I already texted him," said Natasha.

She continued to sit in bed and fold her belongings into a duffel bag. The man in the room, on the other hand, paced up and down more times than she could count. It almost made her nauseous.

It also almost made her want to bite his head off and skewer it on a stick, because he was starting to grow on her in a bad way. She then chided herself internally for letting such thoughts surface in the first place.

"And?"

"And he said he's on his way."

The way she said it had been so nonchalant, the doctor scoffed. "You're not even the least bit worried that he didn't show up for his check-up yesterday, aren't you? Or the fact that he disappeared for an entire day, or that nobody could reach him?"

She exhaled a controlled sigh. "He doesn't like hospitals, or doctors. He also likes to disappear. Doesn't like being around people, it drains him. 24 hours is short, considering."

"He literally almost died half a month ago, so don't blame me if I'm expecting a total balls-up when he suddenly falls off the grid."

"Michaelson," she finally strangled the piece of clothing she was folding in her hands. She spoke through her teeth. "If he replied, he's alive. Okay? Stop freaking out. You're freaking _me_ out."

"Right. Sorry." The doctor apologized.

He then left to go around, peeking into other rooms in the Psych ward whilst Natasha continued to pack her belongings into the duffel. She enjoyed the momentary silence for as long as she managed to, before he came pacing in again.

Well, at least she took what little peace and quiet she got that morning.

Michaelson paced up and down the length of the room, then sat in the chair and bounced his knee with his chin resting on his knuckles. Then, he stood up again and brought his chair closer to her, and simply stared until she looked up.

After trying to avoid communicating with him for five minutes, she gave in. "What?"

"How did you meet him?"

"What?" She asked, this time actually looking at the man in the face. She was caught off guard by the question.

"Clint. How did you meet Clint?"

Natasha pondered. "Do we have physician-patient confidentiality?"

"Do we really need that?" He asked. She stared at him in a deadpan manner, with dead serious eyes that shook him from the inside. "Well, I am a physician."

"Are you trying to be a therapist? Is that why we're talking about this?"

"I was a psychiatrist before...?" He shrugged his shoulders.

"Are you trying to be my therapist?"

"Do I need to be your therapist to answer that question?"

"Nope," she said with a playful half-grin. She had played him. The fact that the man had almost believed her, made him slightly more bearable. Only slightly. "He was sent to kill me. We met in a hotel room in Beirut."

Natasha went back to folding her remaining sets of clothing and squeezing them into her bag. Given how long she hadn't left the infirmary, which was about nearly six months, she had a lot of belongings. It was almost surprising how many black tops she had, or how little underwear.

There were a couple of Clint's clothing as well, amongst her pile. Some were because he'd left it there by accident after secretly spending the night with her, and others because she had went to his nearby dorm or apartment for it. Not his apartment in Brooklyn, though, even though it had most of his things. It was where they had stayed together before this whole situation.

It was also the place she vividly remembered staring straight into the mirror and watching herself exhale before taking a knife to her own throat.

She pulled on a pullover that she'd gotten from his dorm. She had to pull up the sleeves so high just so she could see her own wrists.

"S-So you got married to a man that tried to kill you on your first meeting?" Michaelson was bewildered. "Not judging, or anything."

She folded another article of clothing. "He was sent to kill me. I didn't say he tried to. In fact, he saved me. Stopped me from doing something I wouldn't have come back from."

"Was that how you came to fancy him?"

"God no. I hated his guts after he brought me in. I couldn't get past how he ruined all the plans I'd had for myself, if everything had went just as planned."

"Can't imagine the two of you bickering. You both don't sound like the type."

"Oh, we bickered. A lot, over everything and anything," she grinned, reminiscing old times. It last half a second before the grin faded a little. "Then his wife at the time, she died. He hadn't slept in 46 hours when I saw him. He was burying whatever that was left of her. When he came back and saw me at his door, he just snapped. He was a lot different after that."

"And you learned to hate his guts a little less?"

She shook her head. "He just wouldn't pick fights anymore. He was a passenger in life, just waiting and waiting for a day to finally check out, you know. I'd literally throw things at him just to get a reaction, and he would just walk away. He sat at her grave every day for a year, just punishing himself."

"Is he still different, now?"

"Yeah," the grin completely left her features by now. "He used to be a lot happier. Had less anxiety. Shared more. But, death does that to people."

Michaelson frowned, and sank into his chair with a certain kind of newfound heaviness. "Shite. Never knew."

"Yeah, it was a rough time," she frowned too. Her hands stopped working. "Then we started sleeping together. Like, fucking. He just hated the idea of being alone. I knew how to curb that. Had _experience_."

"And you're just sharing all this with me? Even the shagging." The doctor had this look on his face, like he was uncomfortable with the information she was sharing.

Natasha shrugged with a straight face. "You said you wanted to know how I knew he was it. I'm not missing out on any details. I trust we're still upholding the whole physician-patient confidentiality thing, right?"

"Y-yeah." He stammered.

"But if I hear about it on some 'Clintasha' fan page or in one of those creepy fan fiction website stories, I will kill you. I'm not even kidding. I will string you up by your pinkies, and kill you."

"I don't have a fan page-"

"So we slept together, right? The whole friends with benefits stint." The assassin interrupted. "First time I ever handled one of his panic attacks after her death, he was drunk, the kind that gave killer hangovers. We'd just slept together, all butt naked, and all of a sudden he shot out of bed and started repeating over and over to himself that he was cheating on her."

"On his dead wife?"

"Yeah," she played with her fingernails. "He couldn't breathe. He was trembling all over. When he fell over, he couldn't get up. He was hitting himself in the head with his hands, and I just held them down."

"Was that when you knew?"

"No. When I knew, it was a few months after he'd lost his hearing. We were fucking. He had all this anger pent up within him, and I was just... there, I guess? It brought up some things, things I was quite ashamed of. I felt like I was choking. I just wanted to get out of there. I told him we had to stop, just for the night."

Natasha could recall it just as if it were yesterday. She could smell the way her sweat smelled on his skin, back then. He used to use this wild berry shampoo that made her feel 200 different kind of ways, and very attracted. Well, until the smell of skin against skin reminded her of other kids of less ideal men.

He didn't quite use it anymore, but he still smelled great any day.

She paused for a moment, but Michaelson patiently waited. It was surprising, that he wasn't pushing. That was a first.

"Then I ran to the bathroom and puked everything that I ate that day. He asked me what was wrong, and I told him everything. What I'd remembered. How disgusted I felt with myself. What I'd experienced." She continued. "He never touched me again for years, unless I wanted him to. That night, that's how I knew."

"Because he understood the word no?"

"That night, he taught me how to live with myself again." She said. "I was so used to being objectified as nothing more than a thing to kill the time, pleasure someone else, that I felt like nothing without it. It was a bulk of the reason I slept with him at all. But that night, he taught me otherwise. Since then, I've trusted him entirely. He became my person. Fought my demons for me when I was drowning in them. Saved me when I couldn't save myself."

"That's nice, to have someone." Michaelson smiled.

"It is," she agreed. "But this... _thing_ now. It's like I'm undoing everything he's ever done for me. It sucks."

"Well, at least you're getting better."

"Yeah, at least there's that." She pressed a smile and started folding her belongings again.

The doctor frowned. Her response seemed tentative, more tentative than he'd liked for someone that was getting discharged. "You're getting better, right? That's why they agreed to get you discharged?"

"I'm not a danger to myself or others anymore, if that's what you're asking." She folded a shirt in quarters.

"No, I'm asking, are you _really_ better?" He pulled the chair even closer to her bed and looked up at her, a hand to her knee. She adjusted her knee and his hand dropped to the sheets. "Like... Are you sleeping? Can you eat? Can you get out of bed every morning? Do you feel like you're choking? Or do you still look forward to the next chance you get to-"

"Do I still want to die?" asked Natasha. "That's the question you were going for, right? Because being _'better'_ just means not wanting to die?"

"I was going more for 'isolating yourself from the rest of the world', but I guess that works too."

"You don't have to walk on eggshells around me, you know. I've dealt with this my entire life, it becomes me. Just like talking about the weather," she said. "And yes. If I'm being truly honest, it's inviting."

"How inviting?"

"Very."

"How often?"

"Frequently."

"Weekly?"

"Daily."

"Once a day?"

"Every minute."

Michaelson paused for a moment, and removed the hand he had on her bed. He kept it near him instead. "Do you act on them?"

"I don't."

"Do you want to?"

She pursed her lips together and shrugged faintly. She didn't offer a reply.

"Does he know?"

Again, she didn't respond. Her tight-lipped smile faltered a little.

"How could you lie to him? He's your husband. He's your _person_."

"Exactly. He's my husband," she remarked bitterly. "And I am disgusting. I'm revolting. I'm garbage to him, if I'm sick. I don't want him to see me the way I already see myself. If it hurts me, it hurts him more. So much more."

"Natasha..."

"Do you know what the difference between sinking and drowning is, Michaelson?" Natasha questioned.

Medically speaking, of course he did. But the doctor shook his head and said, "Tell me."

"It's the struggle," she said, scoffing sorely to herself. "When you're just sinking, you're not fighting. It just doesn't hurt. It's painless. You've accepted that you can't break free of whatever's holding you down. You've accepted that there's no hope. You accept, and you let the water in, and you let it hurt you until it doesn't."

"So you've learned to sink."

She nodded in response. "But Clint, he's _good_. He's perfect. He deserves everything great in the world. But he's been given everything bad, and so he's always fighting to make something good out of everything that's bad."

Natasha could remember how she had started in all of this. She had been through the struggle. She had known exactly how it was like to drown. Despite only drowning in her own head, her lungs had felt starved of air for so long that it hurt.

"When you're drowning, you struggle. Everything hurts. You'd try to keep the water out, keep fighting your way to the surface. The urge to breathe in burns your throat. Your head pounds and you can't see straight. Your limbs starve for more oxygen to put up a longer fight, but they only get heavier. Your body starts to fail, physical fail-safes kick in."

"Voluntary apnea," added the doctor.

"Exactly," she replied with a twitch in her lip. "When it gets to that point, only one of two things happen. You either manage to find the surface if you're lucky, or your body gives up and you let the water in and let it kill you."

"But letting the water in doesn't mean you have to stop fighting."

"When you've felt the burn so many times, and you know that each time it happens, it always hurts worse than the last, is it really worth it anymore? The struggle? Isn't it better to just give in? To give up? Can you tell me, as someone who's only ever felt a fraction of the pain that someone like me carries, that the pain is still worth it?"

He nodded. He understood. He saw a certain fear in her eyes that he had never once seen before, and he accepted it wholly.

"I'm so afraid that he'll stop fighting, that he'll let the water in. That in his adversity, he'll learn to sink. If he does, there'd be no reason to be alive anymore. He would lose that," she said. "So how am I supposed to tell him the truth? He won't even know how to breathe anymore, and that would be my fault. I would ruin him."

"He wouldn't be mad if you stayed just long enough to actually get better."

"He's lived in hospitals before. I mean, he told me it was just food and lodging back when he was roughing it out on the streets, but he worked hard to get out of it. I'm not planning to make him live in one again just because I'm here, especially how much he hates it."

"So you'd lie to him for, what, the rest of your life?"

"Until I actually get better. I want to. I have to. I can't live like this my entire life."

"And this is supposed to be easy for you?"

Natasha chuckled briefly and darkly. "It's what I do best. Lie. Maybe one day I'll even start to believe myself."

"It shouldn't."

"I'm not asking for an opinion," she retorted pointedly. "You asked me a question, and I only answered as honestly as I could out of respect. This still doesn't give you any right to judge my decisions."

Michaelson sighed, and rubbed his eyes with his fingers. "You do know that this is not only dangerous, but damaging to your recovery, don't you? This depression, it isn't just a game anymore. It can kill you, and it will."

"Let it," she shrugged. "Besides, I have no place in this world."

"I can't help you if you keep this up, Natasha. None of us can."

She stared him dead in the eye. "I'm not asking you to."

The doctor maintained her stare for what seemed like minutes, as if to strong-arm her into believing that what she was doing was completely out of hand and plain stupid. His nostrils flared, his jaw was set strong, and he had a permanent frown to his forehead.

She didn't budge, and neither did he for the longest of times. Then, when he couldn't sit around any longer and needed to walk it off, he stood up abruptly and started pacing around the room again. They stayed completely quiet with nothing else to say to each other.

He was about to leave the room to blow off some steam when the archer entered the room. It was the first time he ever experienced how quickly she could slip out of whatever dull state she was in, and into a mask that just smiled and smiled and smiled.

Michaelson fought the urge to roll his eyes, or walk out of the room. It made the atmosphere in the room even more tense, but Clint didn't seem to pick up on it.

"Hey," the archer smiled and wrapped his arm snugly around Natasha. He pecked her on the forehead. He then nodded towards the doctor in greeting as well.

He seemed out of it. He was tired. Natasha could feel a controlled tremble in his arm, but he moved it quick enough for her to catch only a small fraction of it.

"Gave us quite a scare there, Agent Barton," remarked the doctor. "Something came up?"

The archer was staring out the door now, but it was obvious enough that his mind was somewhere else. "Yeah, busy. Lost track of time. Sorry about that."

"I can set up the check for you for today, if you'd like. Room should be free."

"Sure, that'll be great. Sorry, again."

"Don't be," said Michaelson. He looked between the couple, gaze falling first on Natasha and then back on Clint. "All set for now?"

"I'm actually a bit famished, haven't eaten much since yesterday afternoon. I'll grab a bite and meet you in an hour, same room?"

"Sure thing." The doctor managed half a smile, and retreated out of the room.

After he left, Natasha shifted to the other end of her bed to make more space, and Clint made himself at home. He took out his phone and dropped it on the bed, their message conversation open on the page.

 _"Save me?"_ He joked with an arched brow. It didn't pack quite a comic punch as it would have, as he had sounded worn.

"He was being annoying." She shrugged. She gathered her duffel bag together and threw it to the floor with a thump.

"He must have met his match with you." Clint continued. "He looked really pissed when he left. Didn't think he had that in him, to be honest. You must've really stepped on his toes."

"I hate doctors."

"No, _I_ hate doctors. You just like making their lives miserable. You should cut him some slack, he's probably stressed enough with my mess after Fell passed me over."

"Fine," Natasha muttered. "I hate them _for_ you."

"Did you happen to forget your entire practice? Or did it just, I don't know, blink itself out of existence?"

"I only _used_ to be a doctor," she corrected. "Plus, it was a long time ago. I did it for the mission, and I didn't like it. The Oath, it's too black and white for someone like me, especially with my loose morals."

"Your morals aren't loose. Just minutely misguided."

"Is that supposed to be a compliment or an insult?" Natasha feigned a frown.

"Come on," he nudged. "People like us, people who've killed? Morals aren't exactly top priority."

"True," she grinned. "Anyway, like I said, I didn't even like it. It was a cover for the mission. Don't forget how I skipped an entire residency."

"You still did great anyway."

"Only because we were trained," she said. It brought back bitter memories of her training days. "And because I never failed."

"Regardless, you should learn to like it."

"Why?"

"You inherited a damn hospital from your parents, Tash. It could use your expertise." Clint remarked.

"Oh, I don't want it. I was thinking of selling."

"You're not even thinking of going back into it, after we leave this place? You're more than just a good surgeon."

Natasha shook her head without second thought. "Yes, I'm good at it. But let's not live in another hospital after leaving this one, okay? Like you said, it starves the light right out of you."

"If that's what you want," he said. The archer stroked her now-blonde hair and played with her tips. "Who do you want to sell it to?"

The tremor in his hand was coming back again, the longer he held it by the ends of her hair. Once again and as expected, he kept his hand to himself as soon as she glanced upon it inquisitively.

Natasha frowned. "I don't know yet. Whoever's name looks best plastered across every piece of stationary ever seen in one single place, I guess."

"It just dawned on me that you're probably richer than Stark."

"Oh, shit." Her eyes widened. "Well, we could share it."

Clint checked the time on his phone and started to stand up from the bed. His leg nearly gave way when he heard what she'd said, and he groaned inwardly.

"We're not talking about this again." He said with a pointed grin, and pulled her into an embrace, attempting to muffle any words that came out of her mouth again.

She mumbled into his chest anyway. "It's been two years. Besides, once we're married, we're sharing surnames. It's only right to share other things as well... Like a hospital. At least until we sell it."

"Until _you_ sell it. I'm not interested in getting involved in all the dirt." By dirt, the archer meant business, legalities, politics, finance and shares. He just wasn't born for it.

For god's sake, he used to be homeless.

"But what if something happens to me?" She challenged, standing up beside him.

It escaped her much faster than she could bite back. He froze. His face did a one-eighty. Whatever tired, joking smile that had graced his face was gone, and in its place was only a hint of a tentative half-grin that was shot with emptiness and worry.

 _Stupid_ , she scolded herself.

Now that she was looking at him proper, she could see the dark crescents under his eyes that hadn't left his face for weeks. There were fine lines growing into his face, probably from tire. He looked exhausted, completely drained.

She wondered what kept him busy yesterday.

Clint shrugged it off as if she hadn't caught his face completely change. "Let's not talk about this anymore, okay? Not yet."

The assassin relented and nodded in agreement, and slipped a hand into his. "You don't have to worry about me." She comforted.

He slipped his hand out and wrapped his arms around her again instead, a little too tightly for her liking. Then, after pulling back and cradling her face in his hands, he pressed his lips to her hairline, and then to her lips.

He didn't offer any other response to the matter.

"I have that stupid check-up in less than an hour. I'm gonna get something to eat before going over. Will you be fine here? Do you want anything?" He deflected.

Natasha shook her head. "Vending machine food, again?"

"Only kind of food I know," he joked, ruffling her hair.

"I'll see you after, then?"

"Yeah, after. Then we can go back to my place."

"Brooklyn?" Her voice wavered.

He froze again, but recovered much faster this time. "SoHo. The penthouse, remember?"

"Thought you didn't like your SoHo apartment."

"Because it was too big for one person. The thought of living alone in it, it freaked me out. Now I have you." He shrugged.

"Okay, see you later."

He pecked her once more before heading towards the door. "Oh, I almost forgot. I'm going to Iowa next Thursday."

"Going back? What's up?"

"Mission, with Barnes."

"With James? That's new." She frowned.

She recalled the older times that James was her partner instead, and times when she was Clint's. This change felt awkward and weirdly paired, and her feelings towards this sudden pairing must have shown expressively on her face.

Clint crossed his arms in front of him. "You don't like it." He teased, with much less comicality than usual.

Her previous partner and her current partner, together on a mission? She wasn't too excited about it. She avoided responding to the tease entirely.

"What do you have to do?"

"CEO of Dixon Global, he's been using the company to fund some weapons initiatives in the black market. Gotta plant some bugs, set some things in motion to flush out the collaborators."

"Then what's James' purpose there?"

"Sniper."

She probably made another face, which had caused him to stifle an amused chuckle. "But you never miss."

A grim look flashed across his face, too quick to register fully. "He's tried and tested. He's good. Plus he's just a Plan B, if need be."

"Is this about your last mission, is that it?"

"No," he said. "It's... It's just like you and I. You're the one that always goes in with a cover, because you're better at it. Barnes has a metal arm. There's not a chance he'll be able to walk into any building without drawing attention."

Well, that did kind of make sense.

"Okay," she agreed. "Iowa, you gonna be fine?"

"Why wouldn't I be?"

"Iowa doesn't bring out the best in you, for starters. Last time we were posted there, you swapped out."

Natasha could recall the hour-long private conversation that the archer had with Coulson after he completely flipped out over the mission in a very vocal manner. After that conversation, Coulson assisted with the swap and she was sent in with another fellow specialist in her batch, Grant Ward.

"I'll be fine, Tash. It's a quick one anyway, in and out."

"Then you're coming back?"

He contemplated for a moment, then sighed. "I'm not planning on sticking around."

"Okay. Let me know how the mission goes."

"I'll let you know when I get back." The archer pressed an exhausted smile, like the past five or six times he'd done so, and went on his way.

She wasn't sure if he'd realized it himself or not, but he didn't even stop at the vending machine on his way out.

For a moment, a fear gripped Natasha in the stomach that he was keeping something from her. Whatever that was making him listless and tired. But with a rational mind, she convinced herself that she was the liar in this relationship. He hated lying.

So maybe he was just tired. And tired was normal. She repeated it over and over to ease her mind.

* * *

 **TBC**


End file.
